


I Can't Stand to Fly

by labelladonna99



Series: We were wrecks before we crashed into each other (Wall Verse) [4]
Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-04-23 14:44:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14334720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labelladonna99/pseuds/labelladonna99
Summary: He couldn't remember anything from his life





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In later chapters, some entries are dated. They are only for clarity as the story moves back and forth in time. Heroes has a wacky timeline so I have no idea if the dates used for canon events are accurate.

_An undetermined time and place_

 

Darkness was all I could remember. It wasn’t the type of dark that you would adjust to and gradually begin to make out the dim shape of things. No light, not even the smallest pinpoint, penetrated. It was more like...nothing. I’d been having bizarre thoughts or maybe they were dreams. Nightmares. Whatever they were, I was pretty sure they didn’t belong to me. Whoever _me_ was. The dreams were terrible, full of blood and death and a wordless rage that didn’t feel like mine.

I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know _what_ I was. And yet, I seemed to exist.

Every so often, there were faint ripples that weren’t light but an inexplicable sensation of somethingness. A presence. I reached for those fleeting tendrils of clarity only to find it was like trying to grasp smoke with hands I didn’t possess.

There was a man. He wasn’t me. But he _was_ me. How that could be when I didn’t seem to be anybody was beyond my comprehension. It made me tired. I slept for what might have been days, weeks. Months maybe. There was no way to tell and when I woke up, I had to piece it all together again.

He controlled me, somehow. He radiated heat that accelerated in intensity until it was a singular point of molten rage that obliterated all thought. He knew, somehow, that I was here ( _where_ ?) and he hated it.

_That makes two of us, buddy, whoever the hell you are._

Then the darkness dissolved and I could see and feel and move. I could breathe and that alone felt incredible. I swung my legs (legs, I had legs!) out of bed and stood up. I’d never seen the room I was in before. It might as well have been Mars. The first thing I did was look for a mirror. The bathroom seemed like a logical place to find one. Was that me? I lifted my right hand and touched my face. The guy in the mirror imitated the gesture, so I guessed he was me. I still wasn't sure who me was but at least I could put a face to myself. Short dark hair, dark hazel eyes, square face. I needed a shave. 

Too soon, the nothingness engulfed me again until it was everything. It was lonely. My head ( _what head?_ ) began to pound and then I slept or at least I assumed it was sleep because it was more nothing than nothingness. I was just gone. I didn't exist at all.

Oh God I can’t think...I can’t….how? What the fuck? What’s happening? Am I crazy? Is that what this is? Am I a multiple personality? What happened was that I woke up feeling like it was just a regular day, whatever the hell that means … I don’t remember any regular days. Or any days at all. Eyes opened and I could see. I heard noises. Ticking. There were clocks everywhere. And then I was moving. Or being moved.

I looked down at my bare feet shuffling across the wood floor and they didn’t look familiar. The floor should have been cold but I couldn’t feel it; in fact, I couldn’t feel anything at all. The feet kept moving until I was standing in front of the mirror and

_Who the hell is THAT?!_

It was a different face, a different person, not the guy with the short dark hair. This face was topped with lighter hair; the hair was longer too and the eyes were brown, not hazel, with thick, dark eyebrows. I tried to touch the face I saw in the mirror and the hand wouldn’t obey me. I thought if I could just gather my concentration, everything would be normal again. Then the hand flew up, as if shaking off a spider crawling up its arm.  
  
“Cut it out in there,” the guy in the mirror said. “You’re giving me a fucking headache.” I could hear him and I could see his lips moving in the reflection but the voice wasn’t coming from me...I wasn’t saying those words.

_I don’t think that’s me._

“Of course I’m not you. You’re pathetic.” The guy’s lip curled and he spat the words. 

 _Who the fuck are you?_  
  
“Quit the games, Petrelli. Why don’t you go back to sleep or whatever it is you do in there? You’re getting annoying.”  
  
Petrelli? Is that who I am?

“You really don’t know?” Two massive, dark eyebrows lowered into a frown.  
  
_I have no idea. I can’t remember._

“How the hell can you not remember when all you _are_ is a memory?” the guy in the mirror asked.

 _??!! What does that even mean_ ?  
  
“Shut up. I don’t have time for you right now. You’ll have to figure this out on your own because I have better things to do than talk to a voice inside my head.”

The vision dimmed and awareness faded back into the familiar darkness. It was true, then. I was nothing more than a personality in some guy’s fractured mind.  The next time it happened, I was looking out through my alter ego’s eyes at a chubby guy who seemed familiar. He was pissed off. The conversation went something like this:

Chubs:  How am I supposed to do that?

Alter ego: Create a mental block, repress them, I don't really care, to be honest. All I know is that once I'm free from the temptation of my ability...

Chubs:  M-hm? You're gonna be normal? I'm sorry, that ship sailed, what, fifty murders ago?

After that, everything went dark again. It sounded like my alter ego wanted to get rid of me. _I_ _know the feeling, guy_.

It happened again and this time, my alter ego was flipping out. He spent what felt like hours sprinting up and down stairs in an apartment building, banging on doors, screaming. None of it was coherent. Finally, he staggered outside and collapsed on his ( _our_?) knees in the middle of an empty road. I didn’t recognize the street; it reminded me of LA and then things got weird, the air flickered or something and I could have sworn it was New York. I didn't stop to consider at the moment how I knew that.

The sound of ticking woke me up sometime later and I was in another apartment surrounded by clocks. Every flat surface was littered with them and there was a workbench cluttered with wristwatches and more clocks, along with some tiny screwdrivers. The only thing this guy had more of than clocks was books, loaded on the shelves that lined the walls like sentries waiting for their orders. He seemed to have calmed down; he drank a mug full of tea and read one of his books, something about priests. I wished I could get out, be in possession of a body again. I was hoping that if I were quiet, he wouldn’t notice me. It worked for a while but all I got to do was read his damn book. I didn’t want to read. I wanted to get out of this crazy, crowded little apartment and figure out where the hell I was. Maybe he had a shrink who could get me out of here, put me back in control.

“That’s not happening, _Senator_.” He sneered and went back to reading. I thought I was Petrelli? Was there someone else in here?

_Come on, guy. Give me something. Who are you? How many personalities do you have?_

He laughed at that. “Is that what you think? You’re not very bright, are you? I thought Peter was the dumb one in your family.”

 _Peter? Who is that?_ The name tugged at my consciousness but no answers materialized.

“I’m trying to read, if you don’t mind. Go away.”

He didn’t speak to me any further but he also didn’t banish me again for a long time. The book was pretty good, actually, but I was still going stir crazy in there.

I was out more and more often, sometimes for entire days. Mostly it was mind-numbingly boring. He’d finish the book and then start reading it again. It was good, but not _that_ good. When he wasn’t re-reading the same book over and over, the guy had a thing for watches and clocks and he’d tinker with them endlessly.

“Timepieces,” he said with a haughty sniff. “I restore timepieces...or I used to.” He swept everything aside, stopping just short of sending it all to the floor, and rose from his chair. For several moments he remained still, like a toy whose batteries had run out. Although I was in his head, I didn’t have access to his thoughts. Then he seemed to shake off whatever it was and spoke again. “That was a long time ago.”

He stalked to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. I tried to remain unobtrusive. I seemed to have a knack for making him angry.

“Don’t flatter yourself. Not everything is about you.”

_What it is about then? Seeing as we appear to be sharing the same head space, it’s only fair you give me some answers._

“We all want answers, Senator. What makes the sky blue? Does God exist? Why am I here?” He paused to sip his tea then set the cup down. “Except I already know those answers,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. Could he be any more condescending?

_You know your purpose? Good for you. Some people spend their whole lives searching for that._

_“_ Who said anything about purpose? I meant here, in this godforsaken empty city. I know why I’m here.”

_Care to enlighten me? I don't even know where ‘here’ is._

_“_ You haven’t noticed my lack of visitors? Or that I rarely go out?”

_If you’ve left this apartment since that day in the road, I haven't been aware of it._

“Then I suppose it’s time for a little outing. To enlighten you, as you said.”

Outside, it was winter turning to spring. I couldn’t feel the air, but the sidewalk trees were bare and he wore a coat, unbuttoned. The sun hung higher in the sky than in the dead of winter. He walked for several blocks before stopping. I took it all in but had no words to make sense of it. 

“This is your hometown, Petrelli. Does it seem familiar?”

_Vaguely. Where the hell is everyone? It’s like a movie set, not a real place. There aren’t even cars. It’s eerie._

“Hmm. Yes eerie is a good word for it. Welcome to my own private Idaho. Aka hell. What about the building? Does it bring back any memories?” He gestured towards the building he’d stopped in front of. It was nondescript, beige stone, fronted by a dirty glass door.

_No. Should it?_

“You spent quite a bit of time here. Especially during your booze-soaked pity-party when nobody except mommy-dearest would come near you. Maybe the apartment will jog your memory.”

The apartment was nearly barren. Blue walls with white molding, no furniture except a round kitchen table and chairs and a mattress on the bedroom floor. The wall separating the bedroom from the rest of the apartment was glass. Not very practical and clearly not original to the building’s era. Another wall was covered in pin holes, as if it had been used as a bulletin board.

There were some papers and envelopes strewn across the kitchen counter.

“Oh look, the electric bill is overdue. Petey’s been a bad boy, so busy saving the world he hasn’t been keeping up with the bills. Tsk tsk.” He riffled through the scattered papers. “Ah, here it is. Surely this will have some meaning to you.”

The photograph he held between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand showed two men in tuxedos. The older man was the same guy I’d seen in the mirror, the face I’d been able to touch. The other guy in the picture was young, dark-haired and good-looking. I felt drawn to his image but no solid memory would shake loose.

My alter ego was tense. I could feel it. When you spend all your time sharing a body, you get to know someone’s moods. This whole outing had seemed like a lark for the guy. He hadn’t previously shown any interest in filling the gigantic void that was my memory and now, this photo was upsetting him for reasons I couldn't fathom. Did he want me to know who or what I was or not? Obviously I was more than just one of his alter identities if I’d had a physical presence outside of his head.

_I got nothing, guy._

“Interesting,” he said, and pivoted to glance around the apartment, still holding the photo. “I was certain this would do the trick. To think, you wallowed in your misery for months, mourning your lost baby brother, and now you can’t dredge up a single - “

_Wait, he’s my brother? He's dead?_

_“_ What? Ohhh, yes of course, I see how you might have gotten that idea from what I said.” He ran his hands, first one, then the other, through his hair. “I - I’m not really sure. It seems everyone is.” He was still turning this way and that. I didn’t know what he was looking for, only that he sounded like a bewildered kid. “Peter _was_ a bit of a mess the last time I saw him…”

He looked down at the photo again and rubbed his thumb across the surface. If I'd had a body, it would have been covered in goosebumps.

_It seems everyone is what? Dead?_

“There’s nobody here, Petrelli. Or did you think I wasn’t introducing you to my friends so I could have you all to myself? Obviously something has happened and they’re all dead. Maybe. Most likely.” He flung the photo back on the kitchen counter and turned to exit the apartment.

 _Hang on...uh, can we take the photo?_  

“Feeling nostalgic for the brother you can't remember?”

 _Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It’s just..._ I hated to sound so pleading with this smug bastard. _It’s all I have..._

“Actually, it’s not. But fine.” He snatched the photo off the counter and glanced at it one more time before sliding it into the inside pocket of his coat.

“Poor Peter. My nemesis. I didn’t treat him very kindly.”

I couldn't tell if that was his habitual sarcasm or genuine regret.

 

***

 

When we got back to the guy’s place, it was business as usual. He messed around with his clocks, then made himself a sandwich and sat down to read his book. I had thought he was going to spill the big secret of my identity and fill in the gaps in my memory...well, it was all a gap, a big one.

_Why do you keep reading the same book over and over? You must have a thousand books in this place._

_“_ I don't recall asking for your opinion.”

_Yeah well it’s not like you have anyone else to talk to._

“I’m used to being alone and as you can see, I’m rather good at keeping myself entertained.” Contradicting his words, he flipped the book shut and got up, prowling the apartment aimlessly. I’d made him angry again and I didn't care. I was sick of this shit and sick of him.

_Being alone is one thing but not like this. Nobody could get used to this. I don’t know how you stand it._

“Shut up, Petrelli.”

_What is it about you that makes you a loner? Can’t be your sparkling personality._

“I’m warning you, just shut the hell up.”

_You’re warning me? What are you going to do, beat me up?_

“No, something worse.” That was the last thing I heard him say before I was smothered in darkness once more.

It was a month or more before he let me out again. I could tell because the unavoidable clocks everywhere said it was past six o’clock and it was still light outside.

_Did you get lonely?_

“Don’t be ridiculous. Even if I were lonely, you’re not anyone I would choose to spend time with.” He was sitting on the couch with a book open on his lap. A different book, finally. With its pages open, I couldn’t see its title.

_So why’d you let me out?_

“Maybe I’m bored. I’ve taken apart every timepiece in this apartment multiple times, I haven’t found any others that interest me yet and this book is shitty. I’ve already figured out who the villain is.”

_Sounds like loneliness to me._

“Fine. Think whatever you want. So what if I am lonely? Anyone would be.”

_Are you ever going to tell me who I am?_

“You’re not real.”

  _What?! That photo was real enough. You’re not making sense._

“And having a disembodied presence in my head is logical? Please.” It was weird talking to someone whose face I couldn't see but I could practically hear his eyes rolling.

_If I’m not real, then what am I? And why’d you take me to that apartment and show me that picture if you didn’t want me to know?_

“It was a test.”

  _I guess I failed, huh?_

“Yes. Just as you’ve failed at everything else in your pathetic existence. Except you don’t exist at all. You’re just another figment of my imagination.”

_How do you figure?_

“If you weren’t an imaginary voice in my head, you would have recognized your own brother. The real Nathan Petrelli would never forget his precious Peter. Even if you were a dick to him, he was important to you for your own selfish reasons.”

I’d just gotten another clue but the sound of my first name was as meaningless as everything else he’d said about me. He may have deduced who the bad guy was in his book, but I was far from figuring anything out about myself, about him - I didn’t even know his name - about where we were, or why.

_So I’m Nathan Petrelli. I’m a senator. I have a brother named Peter. And apparently I’m an asshole. Anything else I should know? It seems I’m a real person and not one of your multiple personalities._

“I don’t have multiple personalities. Just you and as I’ve said, you’re not real.”

_Humor me, then. Where the hell are we?_

“ _We_ are not anywhere because _you_ don’t exist. As best as I can tell, I’m in a post-apocalyptic New York. I don’t know what happened to kill everyone off or why there are no bodies. The other possibility is that my mind is damaged from over-using the shape-shifting .. and from all the torture. Either way, this is apparently my punishment.”

_Look I don’t know who you are, what you’ve done or what any of that stuff about torture and shape-shifting means, but are you thinking this is some sort of biblical plague sent to punish you? Seems like you might be overstating your own importance. Why wouldn’t God or whoever you think did this just kill you instead of everyone else?_

“There’s no God. That’s just a fairy tale I gave up a long time ago. And I can’t die.”

_You can’t die? What have you been smoking?_

“Oh God!” His hands went to his head. “I thought I was going to spend eternity alone but it turns out I’m stuck with you in my head, forever.” He dropped his hands to cradle his face and groaned, rocking himself like someone who’d had a little too much electroshock therapy. I was impatient for it to be over but I waited it out before trying to pry more information out of him. I wasn't exactly thrilled with our living arrangement either.

 _You just said that I’m not real. And I thought you didn’t believe in God?_  
  
“Figure of speech,” he said, still collecting himself. “You’re not real but apparently my psychosis is. I can’t even drown my sorrows in alcohol. I’m sure you’d love nothing more.”

_There’s no booze here? That’s rough, man._

“It’s worse than that. I’m immune to any kind of substance abuse. It goes along with the ‘can’t die’ part. Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to anesthetize myself for eternity but death and delirium are as barred to me as all other escape routes.” He threw the book aside and kicked over the coffee table.  

“Fuuuuccccccck!!!!!”

_Whoa, shhh, shhh. Take it easy, man. Screaming isn’t going to solve anything and you’re not doing yourself any favors giving in to tantrums. Why don’t you let me help you? Tell me what’s going on and maybe we can figure it out together._

He started to laugh and it sounded crazier than the screaming. “Oh that is too rich, Petrelli. _You_ , of all people, want to help _me_? You don’t even know the half of why that is so ridiculously funny.”

He slapped his leg and clutched his mid-section, chuckling with lunatic glee. Several times he swiped at his face, I assumed to wipe away tears of laughter.

“Oh my, I had no idea my subconscious had such a sense of humor. I’m trapped in an empty city with a psychotic delusion of the man I killed and he wants to _help_ me.” And off he went again, until he was spent and he collapsed, breathless, on the couch. If I’d had a body, I would have been standing there with my arms folded and my lip curled in disgust. The guy was an emotional wreck whose wildly seesawing moods made me regret all the times I’d chastised my overly-sensitive younger brother for making a scene. Peter was practically a stoic compared with this guy.

_Wait, what?_

The apartment, the unceasing ticking of the clocks and the sound of the guy on the couch catching his breath all faded in the flash of jumbled memories. Peter! I remembered! It was the first inkling of my past that I’d had in ages. I knew who Peter was, who I was. With that memory came an ache that I didn’t need a body to feel….I missed him, oh God I missed him so much. There was still so much more to the story that I didn’t yet know but according to the guy on the couch trying to put himself back together, I was dead and he was my murderer. No, this could not be happening. It was insane. I was beginning to wonder whether I were the one who had lost my mind and the guy was my own psychotic nightmare. It was the only rational explanation.

For once, it wasn’t him banishing me to the darkness but me, beating a hasty retreat so I could process it all. I could hear his voice, fading from my consciousness but still audible. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? So much for wanting to help me. You’re no different than all the rest….”

“It’s about time you crawled out of your hidey hole,” my roommate said with a snide twitch of his left eyebrow. He was shaving, which seemed like an odd grooming ritual to maintain given his lonely predicament.

_How long has it been?_

“Six days, twenty-two hours and forty-six minutes.”

_You’ve been counting the minutes? Missed me, huh?_

_“_ Time-keeping is what I do. It comes naturally to me. And no, I haven’t missed you but I’ve decided you might be useful to me after all.”

_Oh yeah? How’s that?_

“I’m still not convinced that you’re real. You’ve forgotten your past and I - I was talking to Parkman and then - I don’t know. There’s a blank space and all I remember is finding myself here, alone. If you’re real, then you can get your memories back and maybe you’ll know what happened to everyone...and if there’s anyone left. I would think that if I survived, Claire would be alive, too.”

_Sorry buddy, is that someone I’m supposed to know?_

“Yes, she’s - never mind, it’s a long and complicated story. What’s the last thing you remember?”

_I was running for Congress. Peter came to my campaign office to talk to me but I don’t remember why._

“Then you’re in luck because that’s where it starts.”

_I wish you would stop being so cryptic._

“Patience, Senator,” he said and his mouth turned up in the nearest approximation of a smile that I’d seen on his face yet. Granted, I only got to see his face when he looked in the mirror but his overall demeanor wasn’t of the smiley type and even now, it was more smirk than smile. He made one last pass with the razor, splashed water on his face to clean off the remnants of shaving cream and slapped on some after-shave.

 _“_ Patience,” He repeated. “All will be revealed.”

***

 

I had to wait until after he’d dressed, made breakfast and ate his eggs and toast while re-reading a chapter of _Pillars of the Earth_. I felt like I knew it by heart.

_What is it with this book that you read it endlessly?_

“I get something different from it each time,” was all he said.

_Like what?_

“You’ve read it.” Oh hell yeah. I’d read it and re-read it ad nauseum. I could probably recite it. He chewed his toast and just when I thought I would have to ask for the monologue I knew was coming, he spoke again.

“I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that someone like you can’t find any meaning in it. Everything was handed to you … family, wealth, education, status. You had people who loved you, a wife, children, a brother who worshipped you. You betrayed them all, your own kind. That’s why you can’t understand the kind of devotion required to do anything worthwhile.”

 _Yeah, yeah, we’ve covered that territory already._ I rolled my imaginary eyes. _I’m an asshole. Got it. What does that have to do with the book?_

“Don’t you see? It’s about goals and the persistence to surmount all obstacles. It’s about power. Everyone wants power but only a few are courageous enough to seize what others aren’t using. It’s about appreciating one’s gifts, being special … people who won’t use the gifts they’ve been given don’t deserve them. It’s about love …”

_That sounds melodramatic. You don’t strike me as the romantic type._

“You don’t know anything about me or what type I am. You don’t even know yourself.”

_Fair enough. Speaking of which…_

“Yes, alright. I’ll clean up and then we’ll get you started on operation total recall.” He said it with a snicker, proud of his wit. Me, I was over it. He was clever enough but it always seemed to be at someone else’s expense. Namely mine.

After he’d washed his dishes and set them out to dry, he rummaged in a drawer and brought out a pile of small notebooks with an elastic band wrapped around them. There were three of them, each roughly pocket-sized and about half an inch thick, but so crammed with loose papers that they’d doubled in width.

“Read ‘em and weep, Petrelli. They’re certainly pathetic enough.” He dropped them on the table with a flourish.

_What are they?_

“Really, Senator, you have no imagination. What do you think they are? This is your life, Nathan Petrelli.” I didn't need a mirror to know he was smirking again.

 _So these are what, my journals? You’ve read them? How long have you had them?_ If I could have, I would have wrung his scrawny neck. The nerve of the bastard to invade my privacy and not have the decency to share these with me until now, and only because it served his purposes.

“Oh please, don’t act so offended. I’ve had all of your memories. That’s all you are, you know...a collection of thoughts in the mind of a madman was how I believe you phrased it. I didn't get a vote when the committee of your mother, Bennet and Parkman decided to shove you inside my head.”

_What?! That’s downright bizarre. How does that even happen? I’d say you were crazy except - here I am. But wait, you said I’m not real, so which is it?_

“Exactly - here you are and let’s hope your journals answer the question of your existence. Anyway, I haven't read them cover to cover. Your thoughts are not that fascinating and since I _was_ you for awhile, I already know your story.” He pulled a chair from beneath the kitchen table and let himself fall into it with a loud exhale. “Or at least the parts I unwillingly dredged up while living your life. I apparently contributed to your manifesto when I thought I was you. Those were the parts I was most interested in.”

Everything he said only added more layers to the narrative web he was spinning. _What’s your name, anyway?_

He didn’t answer, just pulled the notebooks toward him, removed the elastic and opened the top notebook.That’s when I felt what can only be described as an unfolding. That’s not it, exactly, but words can’t adequately convey it...I felt my face - mine, not his - rippling and then the same thing was happening to my hands, my legs, my torso...everything. I was back in my own body. I had no idea how he’d done it but it was a pretty neat trick. I resisted the urge to go look in the mirror, not knowing how much time I’d have to read without him metaphorically looking over my shoulder. I appreciated that he’d made himself scarce while I did it though I had a feeling he hadn’t done it for me. Kindness wasn’t one of his strong points.

I couldn’t refrain from checking out the parts of my body I could see and running my hands over my legs, chest. I touched my face and carded my fingers through my hair. It was good to be me again.

***

 

It was the people in my life who I remembered first. The events themselves felt unreal. But as I read each entry in the journal and re-connected with my loved ones, droplets of memory began to form tiny, isolated puddles that grew to fill the gaps between what I had written and what I remembered until the totality of my past washed over me like a baptism.

It started just as he’d said, with me running for Congress. And my brother’s dreams. I devoured the notebooks like a prisoner having his last meal, which, in a way, I was.  


	2. Chapter 2

_Autumn 2006_

I stepped out onto the high diving board today when I announced my candidacy for Congress. I’ll be the first to admit it’s overwhelming to have spectators tracking my every move. Some of them are hoping I’ll execute a perfect dive and others would love to see me crack my skull on the board. Nothing personal, just politics.

Tonight, Ma hosted a celebratory dinner for close family and friends. Heidi’s still too fragile for public events and I’m glad it was a small, personal gathering. Folks in New York and DC who’ve won campaigns - and lost some, too - advised me to nurture my relationships because I’m going to need them. So I’m pacing myself and being realistic. I’m an unknown quantity and there’s every reason to think I won’t win. It’s okay, this is just the beginning.

Heidi is a hundred percent behind me. She’s incredible...if it were me in that chair, I wouldn’t be handling it with so much grace and guts. Maybe after the campaign, I’ll talk to someone, but right now, it would be ammunition for my opponent. Heidi understands that. Obviously there are things I can’t tell anyone about the night of the accident but maybe there’s a way to grapple with the guilt so I can see my wife as a woman again, not a broken invalid. Some of my staffers think Heidi’s disability could be an asset to my campaign. I don’t agree; it’s too new. Makes me look like I’ve got too much on my plate to focus on governing. It’s a weakness. It’s an awful thought to have about my own wife but Vladimir Lenin was right about one thing - there are no morals in politics, only expedience.

The kids are excited about the campaign, too. I had to laugh when Simon asked if we’re going to live in the big white house. I remember being their ages and believing my father was invincible. I want that sense of security for my boys. Dad’s mistakes, well, let’s hope I won’t repeat them. Any push-ups happening in my house are voluntary and more often than not, I’m the beast of burden with two little boys on my back. As slave drivers go, they’re a lot cuter than Dad was and there’s nothing like two kids who think I’m superman to get me to eek out a few more reps.

Ma is thrilled. It’s the happiest I’ve seen her since Dad died. I told her that Dad’s example inspired me. Her practiced smile held for a beat too long at that, shading from genuine to forced to “Christ Ma, stop looking at me like that.” I didn’t say that. She’s still grieving. We all are. I didn’t bother to explain that Dad’s inspiration comes from him having been everything I admire and everything I despise, dressed in a ten thousand dollar suit and a killer tie either way.

And then there’s Peter, my baby brother congratulating me and I can tell he means it. I was grateful that he didn’t accuse me of selling out to the political machine. Maybe he’s finally growing up and developing a more nuanced view of reality.

“You could change things, Nathan, do some real good. That’s why you’re running, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, Pete,” I said. “I want to make a difference in people’s lives.”

A shift of his weight and a hand on my shoulder gently tugging me toward him was our familiar shorthand for a private moment in a public setting. He was wearing his earnest, persuasive expression, chin tilted down, wide eyes looking up at me from under raised eyebrows. “It’s not for the power and prestige, right? Or revenge on Linderman?”

If he thought he was going to dismantle me with one disapproving look, he was wrong. Not today. The high of announcing my candidacy granted me immunity, for once, and his scrutiny didn’t faze me in the least. “Don’t be naive,” I told him. “It’s always for the power and prestige. That’s how you stop guys like him.”

***

_Summer 1979_

"Sixty-seven, huhh, sixty-huhhhh eight, sixty-n-nine, nuhhhh, seventy! Uhhh.” I panted out the last few counts and my arms trembled but I couldn’t relax just yet. I lowered myself slowly, feeling my father’s eyes drilling into me to detect the slightest error in form.

Before my chest touched the polished wood floor, Dad delivered his verdict. “Give me ten more, son. Perfect this time. I don’t want to see your back curve.”

I could feel my features gathering into a scowl. “Dad, I’ve done a hundred and forty push-ups today. That’s the most I’ve ever done.” I struggled to keep the whine out of my voice. My father detested whining.

“Make it twenty more, Nathan, and if I were you, I wouldn’t open my mouth again unless I were ready to do another forty. Go on and get started.”

To resist any further was pointless. It would only get me into bigger trouble and if I ever wanted to get out of the exercise room that day, it was best to do as I was told. I inhaled deeply into my diaphragm the way Dad taught me and began. By the time I was halfway through, my eyes were squeezed shut and every muscle in my body was taut with the effort to grind out the remaining push-ups and meet my father’s exacting standards. When I had completed the last rep, I looked up at him, hoping for a reprieve.

“You call those push-ups?” Dad said. “I’m not interested in watching you do a hundred sissy push-ups. Show me you can do ten of them, just ten, and do them right this time.” I swallowed the anger that was threatening to erupt knowing that he’d purposely let me do all twenty before telling me they weren’t good enough. I wasn’t sure I could do any more but he wasn't giving me a choice. Somehow I managed to put aside how I felt because that wasn’t going to help me now, and with what little strength I had left, I focused on doing one perfect push-up.

“That’s it!” Dad encouraged. “Only nine more.”

I told myself that each one would be the last. Surely I could do one more. And then another, and another, until I was done. The mental trick worked.

“Now that’s how you do push-ups,” Dad said when I finally relaxed. My arms were rubbery, limp noodles. “You need to do them all like that. Let me show you.”

My father, who had to be forty years old or close to it, executed seventy perfect push-ups without a single hair falling out of place. Nobody could ever accuse him of being all talk. I’ll bet his pores didn't dare emit a drop of sweat either until Arthur Petrelli allowed it. After a thirty-second rest, Dad completed his second set, the exertion showing now in the veins bulging from his arm muscles and the slight acceleration of his breathing. From my eleven-year-old vantage point, he was pretty strong and fit for his age. Having proved his point, my father rose to his feet and clapped me on the shoulder.

“You may hate me right now. But someday you’ll thank me. A man needs to be strong and resilient. Power comes from what you are. Do you understand?” Dad’s gray eyes demanded that I hold his unyielding gaze.

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled. I did hate him right then. My friends thought he was outrageous but they weren’t the ones who had to live with him. I never told anyone about the stuff he made me do. It was embarrassing.

“Excuse me, I didn't hear you.” Oh Dad heard me alright. He just didn't like my delivery.

“Yes, sir!” I said, louder this time.

“That’s better.” Dad escorted me from the exercise room with his arm draped over my shoulders. In the kitchen, Millie was putting the finishing touches on lunch. “I hope you’ve got a big meal planned, Millie, because we men have worked up an appetite, haven’t we, Nathan?”

“Right, Dad.” I grinned a little sheepishly. _We men._

***

_Autumn 2006_

Election Day is less than two weeks away and my numbers are not looking good. That’s to be expected. My opponent has better name recognition and a bigger war chest. One of my staffers quit today, two others are shagging each other and making it awkward for everyone else, and my website has more bugs than a pre-war tenement.

The last thing I need right now is to be solving other people’s problems but Peter keeps dropping by wanting to talk. If he had anything supportive to say, or would volunteer to help out on the phone bank, I’d welcome him. But the only thing on his mind is his weird dreams. Like I’m supposed to be able to figure out what they mean? What do I look like, Joseph with the Coat of Many Colors? I don’t have time for his flights of fancy right now. I know I’m wrapped up in myself these days but in case my brother hasn’t noticed, I’m running a campaign. He’s been on this dream kick since the night of Heidi’s accident. If I didn’t know him better, I’d think he was trying to tell me something about how I escaped that crash with no injuries. It can’t be that. It’s not like him to be indirect. He usually says what’s on his mind, no matter how idiotic it sounds.

***

One good thing about my family, I can always count on them to distract me from real problems by dumping their crap on me. First it was Peter, spouting nonsense that he thinks he can fly. So now they’re not dreams that he expects me to interpret. He followed me around like a damn puppy demanding attention, yammering about his foot hovering inches above the floor when he got out of bed. God help me. “You think you can fly? I’ll tell you what,” I said, “Go jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and see what happens.” I think I told him to get some drugs, too, for whatever’s wrong with his head. I get it. He wants to be relevant. I’m running for Congress and he’s watching people die. With parents like ours, it’s understandable that he’s always crying out for attention. Dad was hard on us both but Peter wouldn’t - or couldn’t - straighten up and fly right.

Jeez, did I really just say that? _Fly._ He thinks he can fly. I’m not having this conversation again. I’ve got a campaign to run and a family to feed. That’s where Ma came in with her own unwelcome distraction. She got arrested for shoplifting. Socks, of all things. Good thing my family is so supportive of my run for Congress. After dealing with Ma and getting the news buried, I called Peter and asked him to stop by the campaign office again. I wanted to offer him a job on my campaign, using those nice guy instincts of his to help me bump up my support. I couldn’t get his mind off of flying.

It’s crazy talk. People don’t fly. Anyone who thinks differently gets a vacation in the psych ward and a strong prescription. Normal people know this. You don’t just stroll into your brother’s busy campaign office and casually confide that you think you can fly. A normal person would be worried about why the hell he’s having these thoughts and would be seeking help. See “strong prescription.” Only Peter would be all gee whiz about his comic book fantasies leaping off the page. Peter’s never been normal but let’s put that aside for a moment because, after all, he doesn’t know what happened to me the night of Heidi’s accident. Or does he? I mean, why would he be talking about flying and not, say, x-ray vision or bending steel with his bare hands?

Attempting not to think about that night is like trying to kill a horror movie villain. No matter how much I smother the memory, it won’t stay down. It’s bad enough that Linderman was out to kill me or at least issue a highly convincing warning, and worse to think my own father might have been involved. Heidi paying for it is nightmare fuel. I don’t know how to categorize the rest - me suspended in midair, Peter knowing the crash wasn’t an accident. When he met me at the hospital that night, he didn’t waste many words. After doing his nurse thing and just as I was about to call Ma, he asked, “Do you remember the other car?”

I snapped my phone shut and stared at him, thoughts racing. Crazy thoughts. This was my brother. It was _Peter_ for chrissake. His face was a neon billboard advertising his emotions, same as always, but to ask that, while doctors were trying to put my wife’s broken body back together - it freaked me out. How the hell could he know about the other car?

His question dangled in the silence, just like me thirty feet above the road. “What?” I know my tone was suspicious but my cool courtroom voice took a leave of absence around the time some goons in a car tried to run me off the road.

“From the accident,” he said, patiently prompting me as if he didn’t understand that my question was rhetorical. I knew exactly what he was talking about. The real question was how he knew. I grasped his shoulder, looking around to be sure we had privacy. “Who told you that?” He blinked and shrugged and before he could say something useless or stupid, I asked again. “Who told you that?”

“I had a dream, just before you called.” It came out just above a whisper and it was crazier than I could have imagined.

I muttered something condescending because what the hell kind of an answer was that? He had a dream? _What the fuck, Pete?_

He was relentless as usual and wouldn’t stop playing inquisitor until he got what he wanted. “There was another car, wasn’t there?” I ignored him. “Nathan, wasn’t there?” Okay, okay, so I told him about Linderman’s henchmen coming after me and I asked him if he’d give a deposition if the DA decided to prosecute Linderman. I left out the rest because he didn’t seem to know about my high flying adventure and he didn’t need to.

So now he thinks he can fly and how is that any weirder than anything else that’s happened? I don’t know who I’m protecting here - him or me. Maybe both. I keep telling myself that it doesn’t make sense, it’s impossible; maybe I hallucinated. The memory of flying out of that car feels real but memories are like that - tricky wisps of thought that seem solid until they float away like steam curling from a hot cup of coffee. We can study the path of neurotransmitters across brain neurons and synapses but we can’t see or touch the thoughts that arise from that process. Why are my thoughts and memories mine and Peter’s his? What do our thoughts say about who we are or why we do the things we do? Can we even trust our thoughts when how they’re formed is such a mystery?

The philosophical crap is taking the easy way out, though, isn’t it? Heidi may never walk again and I emerged from that crash with little more than a scratch. Even if I’d been thrown from the car, which is what I told everyone had happened, I would have been a hell of a lot more banged up. So when my baby brother, who’s not so little anymore and can probably kick my ass, says he thinks he can fly, I do what I always do. I dissemble. I mouth snarky, sarcastic remarks. I try to talk him out of it, even if - _especially if_ \- I’m afraid it might be true.

***

  
_Spring 2001_

“Petrelli,” I answered, picking up the phone on the second ring. A mountain of thick folders sat on my desk and I needed to read through them before the end of the day. It was already 10 am and I’d barely made a dent.

“Nathan, I need to see you. Can I come by your office?” It was Peter and, as usual, his timing sucked.

“When? I’m absolutely swamped with work,” I said.

“Today, tomorrow? It’s important.”

“So’s this case I’m prepping. What’s this about? And why aren’t you in class?” Peter was finishing up his last year in college and I considered, before dismissing the thought, that he might be calling to tell me he’d flunked out.

“The semester ended last week,” my brother said. "Graduation’s on the twenty-first. Just tell me when’s a good time for me to stop by.”

I held the phone in the crook of my neck to free my hands as I organized the folders in order of priority. “How about never? You can tell me about whatever it is on the phone. Shoot.”

The sound of my brother’s loud exhale traveling along the telephone wires crackled in my ear. “I’m not going to law school,” he said.

“This again? Come on, Pete. I thought we talked about this.” My secretary stuck her head into my office and I held up a finger to signal that I was almost done with the phone call.

“We did but you weren’t listening,” Peter said. “My mind is made up.”

“Okay, Okay. Come on by tonight and we’ll talk. You’re free for dinner? Be here by 7. I should be able to finish up by then.”

“Thanks, Nathan. I’ll see you later.” I could hear the self-satisfied smile in his voice. He always managed to get his way.

The plan had been for Peter to follow in Dad’s footsteps, and mine, to be a lawyer. Instead, he confided over dinner that he was going into nursing. He had already been accepted into a program that was starting in the fall.

“You know Dad’s not going to pay for it, right?” I informed my brother as the waiter brought our drinks and took our meal orders. Peter couldn’t possibly be naive enough to believe that our father would foot the bill for this defiance. “You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t disinherit you.”

“Yeah, I know that. Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered.” Peter’s crooked mouth twisted into a smirk and for a second I saw the nine-year old he’d been when he figured out the truth about Santa Claus.

“How?” I couldn’t do anything but gape at him. “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been planning this for a long time, alright?”

“You can’t fault me for being surprised. You’re not exactly known for being strategic.”

He picked up his wine glass, inspecting the pale liquid and swirling it before taking a sip. “I know you think I’m some reckless, impulsive kid,” he said, setting his glass down and raising his eyes to meet mine, “but you can’t keep seeing me the way I used to be. Everybody grows up.”

“Even you, apparently.”

Peter’s scowl was briefly interrupted to give the waiter a small, grateful smile as our orders arrived. “Can’t you be happy for me?” Peter asked, returning to the topic. “I know what I want. Law isn’t for me.”

Dad hated the idea when he found out. Ma tried to smooth it over with Dad and placated Peter. She always does; he’s her baby. I’m supposed to be successful enough for both of us, and my brother? Nobody expects much from him, least of all Peter himself. He was free to, I don’t know, just be Peter, because everyone expected me to uphold the family tradition and carry on the Petrelli name. What if I didn’t want to? What if I wanted to be somebody else, take a detour off the path my father laid for me? I didn't even know what that would be, though. I’d never considered anything else.

It was Dad’s wrath that I knew would fall on him like the sword of Damocles that made me try to talk Peter out of his nursing school plans. Why not medical school? It sure as hell would have made Dad happier. My brother may be an imbecile sometimes, but he’s smart enough to have been a doctor if he had put his mind to it. He’s a Petrelli, after all. He’s a nurse because most doctors are bastards who see patients as little more than bodies that need fixing and that’s not Peter. Nurses are the ones who take care of people. It’s an ideal career for him. But that’s not what I said. It's certainly not what I told Dad.

I _was_ happy for Peter that he’d finally found himself. Proud of him, too, though Dad wouldn’t have liked hearing the truth. I mean, Peter’s his own person. He did it without Dad’s money and I’ve gotta give him props for that. A guy’s gotta know what he wants out of life, what his limits are. Peter knew he wasn’t cut out to be a lawyer or a politician and not a doctor either. I didn't say any of that to him then. Maybe I should have.

“You need to give serious thought to whether nursing is really your calling or just more of your adolescent rebellion against Dad.” I leaned back in my chair and watched my brother’s face across the table as my words delivered their payload.

“If that’s what you think, Nate, you don’t know me at all,” he said, with a sad shake of his head. “I thought you of all people would understand.”

It’s not that I liked hurting him. It had to be said if there was any hope of swaying his decision before Dad cut into him deeper than I ever could. I take care of him; I always have, and sometimes it’s kinder to be cruel. It didn’t work anyway. It hardly ever does with him.

***

_Autumn 2006_

When Heidi’s doctor explained how bad her injury was and that she might never walk again, her soft features stiffened in rigid acceptance, though she couldn’t prevent her eyes from filling. A few tears spilled over and she didn’t try to wipe them away as they trickled down her face. When I squeezed her hand, she squeezed back, but she kept her composure. I sat by her bed for days and she swore she was coping and that we’d get through it together. Then Peter came to see her. He touched my shoulder briefly, said, “Hey,” but he wasn’t there for me. He homed in on Heidi like a mother bird swooping in to comfort its wounded fledgling, and suddenly, she was sobbing in his arms. I could almost hate him for that, except that he doesn’t try to be Saint Francis of Assisi anymore than I tried to be Dad’s favorite.

I’m scared. I’m not ashamed to admit that. If I really did fly out of that speeding car, what does it say about me that I bailed on my wife? Peter would have saved her or died trying. What good is flying if I can’t protect the people I love? What good is it now that I have an election to win? Last I checked, you don’t win votes by ripping open your shirt to reveal the giant S on your chest. That earns you a trip to the loony bin, or worse. But if I did fly, it means Peter might not be as nuts as I keep trying to pretend he is. That’s what’s keeping me up tonight. Not the campaign. Not my mother’s shoplifting debacle. Not even Heidi’s recovery, or lack thereof, though that isn’t helping my state of mind either. I can’t sleep because if Peter can fly, there’s no telling what he’ll do. Whatever it is, it’ll be crazy. Planting his feet on terra firma and keeping his mouth shut wouldn’t occur to him. Somehow, the world is going to know about it, and I’m afraid the world isn’t ready for Peter the Flying Petrelli.

***

Peter can’t leave it alone, this flying thing. I don’t know what happened in that car with Heidi. I might have dreamed the whole thing. It’s probably the guilt talking because those goons were after me and she’s stuck paying for it. I’m not like Peter. I don’t think about what ifs or fantasies. I put my head down and focus on what is and what I can do about it. Even if I did fly, what difference does it make? I can’t use that. I can’t see how it helps me or anyone else. I don’t need to test it to see if it’ll happen again. I don’t even think about flying, or I wouldn’t if Peter would just let it go, but he won’t. He called and said he had to see me. “It’s important, Nathan.” He gave me an address, confident that I’d be there. Aren’t I always? I can’t begin to imagine what he’s cooked up this time.

***

The phone rang as soon as I arrived. One minute I was fuming in an alley with my phone pressed to my ear and the next a cell phone - not mine - clattered to the pavement. I had to tilt my head back to see him, fifteen stories above me. (I counted, later, when the paramedics were loading him into the ambulance.)

“I’ve been up here all night, thinking about this, thinking about my destiny,” he shouted, sounding like a lunatic.

“Whatcha doin’ Pete?” I called up to him and he started ranting about it being his turn to be somebody. It always comes back to that and you know what? I blame Dad. He made me what I am, a guy who worked hard to clear the hurdles he put in front of me, a guy who learned not to let anything get in my way. It didn’t work with my brother. Dad made Peter what he is - a guy who kicks the hurdles over and refuses to play the game, a guy with the family money and connections to be anything he wants and he chooses to watch people die, a guy who jumps off buildings to prove a point. Peter thinks _I’m_ like Dad? He's the one charging forward to do things his way. Full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes.

I wasn’t thinking about that or anything else when Peter stepped off that ledge. There wasn’t time and it wasn’t a choice that propelled me; it was fear and instinct and duty. He falls, I catch him. So when he jumped, I did too, flying up to intercept his descent. I grabbed him and for a few seconds we were both flying, clumsily, like a Bizarro Superman airborne ballet. The look on his face was pure reckless wonder, no fear at all. Me, I was terrified, digging my fingers into his wrists to get a grip on him but he was weighted with the momentum from his plunge and I lost him.

So it’s true. My brother can fly. Just call us the Flying Petrelli Brothers. That sounds like a great circus act. Right now, he’s got a concussion and he’s out cold. He’s damn lucky that was the worst of it and when he wakes up, I’m gonna kill him. Just get it over with because I know he’s not gonna stop and I don’t think my heart can take another stunt like that. They say you see your life flash by before you die. I don’t know about that but I saw Peter’s life on fast forward in the seconds before he slammed into the pavement. The cold stark terror of watching him drop away from me is not an experience I want to repeat. Ever. Yeah, I’m gonna kill him before his heroics kill me.

And since this is supposed to be a campaign diary and not a friggin’ family memoir, I’m behind in the polls. Wait til the press gets wind of Peter’s swan dive. The other thing that’s flashing before my eyes is my campaign, swirling down the drain.

***

_Winter 1987 or ‘88_

Peter was about eight or nine years old when he got into his first fight. I was home from Annapolis for the holidays and Peter’s school hadn’t let out yet for Christmas break. He slunk into the house, closed the door quietly and tried to scoot upstairs but I intercepted him in the foyer.

“Hey, Pete! What’s going on?” I greeted him, curious about why he was ducking his head. Whenever I was home, he’d come looking for me the instant he arrived from school.

“Nuthin’,” he mumbled, turning away. “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

“You okay?” I reached for his shoulder and he shrugged me off but not before I saw the bruising around his left eye. It was going to be a helluva shiner. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing. Leave me alone.” He sniffled and dashed up the stairs. I followed, taking them two at a time and catching up to him as he walked into his bedroom. Peter slipped out of his coat and backpack in one move and let them fall to the floor.

“C’mon, talk to me. Who hit you?” He didn’t answer, just pushed past me and went to the bathroom mirror. I watched from the doorway while he ran the cold water and grabbed a washcloth, wet it, squeezed out the excess water and applied it to his eye.

“That’s not gonna work,” I said. “You need ice. I’ll get it and then you’re going to tell me what happened.”

“ ‘kay,” he muttered. “But don’t tell Dad. Or Mom.”

The story came out while I iced Peter’s eye socket as he sat on the closed toilet lid and I crouched in front of him. He was trying not to cry. A few tears escaped and he brushed them away angrily with the heel of his hand.

“It was some dumb kids. They were picking on this girl, Maria, who just got glasses. Really thick ones. They grabbed them away from her and wouldn’t give them back.”

“So you tried to be a hero, huh?”

“She was crying. It was mean. I told them to give her glasses back and they started laughing and saying she was my girlfriend.” Peter sniffled again and continued. “I swiped the glasses and gave them to Maria and she ran. One of the boys, Brian, he’s in my class, pushed me. I pushed him back and the other kid, James, knocked me down, sat on me and punched me. He’s really big. I couldn't do anything.”

The poor kid was so dejected. I nodded. “I know what that’s like.”

“You do?” My brother lifted his head to look at me and his good eye was wide and still teary. The other one was swollen and drooping, halfway shut and ringed with angry colors. His schoolboy hairstyle was disheveled and his uniform shirt and tie were askew. He was a mess.

“Sure,” I told him. “But then I learned how to fight and I’m gonna teach you how to defend yourself.”

“You will?” The way he said it, you’d think I was offering to slay dragons instead of giving him a few pointers on self-defense.

“Yeah, I will.”

“I love you, Nathan.” As corny as it sounds, my brother’s heartfelt declarations always got to me. Still do.

I chucked him playfully on the chin. “I love you, too, Pete.”

We concocted a cover story for our parents because Peter was ashamed for Dad to know he’d gotten beat up. I couldn’t blame him. Been there, done that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, in retrospect, for everything Dad taught me but his methods left a lot to be desired.

Peter and I spent that Christmas break before I had to go back to Annapolis practicing. I had no formal training in any martial arts, only what my father had taught me and what I’d picked up on my own. It’s not like I move in the kinds of circles that call for high level fighting skills but every guy has to learn self-defense.

I taught my brother to fight the way I taught him everything else. First I showed him the basics and made him practice, over and over, again and again until he developed the raw skills he would need to perfect. Then I ambushed him every chance I got. It’s always been part of our repertoire for me to test him. I taught him to catch a baseball by throwing curves. I tackled him every time he caught a pass so he’d learn not to get tackled. I taught him to fight by beating the crap out of him.

***

  
_1995-ish_

“Ow, Nathan!” Peter was flat on his back after I kicked one of his legs out from under him and threw him down. “You don’t have to throw me so hard. I think you enjoy inflicting pain.” He was a teenager by then but I still outweighed him by at least forty pounds.

“You should be glad it’s me and not Dad. You think the push-ups are bad? Try sparring with him. First he kicks your ass and then he stomps on your pride.” I reached down to pull him up, he grabbed my hand and then, just for the hell of it, I pushed him back to the floor and straddled him. “If you’re gonna keep defending the underdogs, Pete, you wanna make sure you’re not one of them. I’m just trying to toughen you up.” Borrowing Ma’s trademark gesture, I slapped him on the cheek. Not hard.

It was the same every time. We’d go at it and I’d win. Eventually he'd catch up and give me my comeuppance. The apprentice always does.

“Fuck off, Nate.” He scowled at me under his dark eyebrows as I got off of him and helped him to his feet. I laughed and squeezed the tops of his bony shoulders. He needed to work on building up those lat muscles. “Love you, too, little brother.”

***

_Autumn 2006_

The little bastard coerced me into meeting him on another rooftop and demanded the truth. He wasn’t buying my story about carrying him down from the fire escape. He wanted to know about Dad’s depression, too. So Ma told him about that. I wonder why? He was toeing the ledge, threatening to jump again, and I could feel the chill of sweat forming on the back of my neck. I gave in: “You flew. We both did.” He didn’t believe me and started yelling but Jesus Christ he was levitating right in front of me. My throat dried up and all I could do was gesture. It was right out of a freaking Looney Tunes cartoon the way he scrambled and then thudded to his feet once he realized he was defying gravity. Then he hugged me. He was so goddamned happy, like a little kid. The hug felt good, familiar and warm. The scent of my brother’s shampoo in my nostrils reminded me of bedtime stories and keeping monsters at bay. God help me. God help us all.

***

  
My trip to Vegas to see Linderman was surreal. I slept with a beautiful but strange woman and the next morning, found myself shirtless and shoeless in the desert. That was after a businessman type in a suit and glasses and his sidekick, a spooky Euro dude whose silence could make a mausoleum seem cozy in comparison, kidnapped me from my hotel room. I escaped by flying and dropped down in front of a diner, wearing pajama pants and nothing else. Stop the crazy train. I want to get off. Did I mention the weird Japanese guy who saw me land? He claimed to be a master of time and space, kept calling me “frying man” and saying “whoosh!” I couldn’t make this shit up.

I’m still behind in the polls but Linderman’s blackmail scheme backfired. The four million he’s going to donate to my campaign should help my numbers. The Japanese kid says I’ll win. According to him, it’s going to be a “land-o-slide-o.”

***

Peter’s pissed off at me. He left me with no choice when he decided to test his wings from the height of fifteen stories. I needed a cover story before the press started poking around about his “accident.” The depression angle fits, and can I help it if it plays well in the polls, making me sympathetic to the problems of ordinary citizens? Depression can strike anyone, even beautiful, rich young men in the prime of their lives.

Oh and I was right about Peter. He can definitely kick my ass. He’s got a hell of a right hook. I went to his apartment the next morning and tried to get rid of him but he wouldn’t take the money I offered him to disappear until my campaign is over.

I’m grateful that as angry as he is at me, my brother covered for me with that reporter at brunch. He saved my ass with Heidi, too, by spinning a story about a blonde doctor - a female doctor - who runs the mental health clinic I was supposed to have been checking out for him in Vegas. Honest, earnest Peter pulled a convincing lie out of his ass while casually plucking grapes from the fruit bowl. I don’t know why I’m surprised about that - he is, after all, a Petrelli. He tortured me first, threatening to fly off the patio and give the reporter something to write about if I didn’t agree to get him the painting he wanted from Linderman. Little prick. I’ve taught him too well.

I don't think Heidi really bought Peter’s story but she wants to believe. I love my wife. I do. But I can barely touch her the way she is. Guilt is shit for the sex drive and my God, that blonde was hot.

***

Bailing my brother out of jail is one of those things I expected to happen eventually. Not because he’s a criminal but have I said he’s an idiot? He’s barely out of his wild teenage phase and seems like he wants to relive it. I think he was always looking for something to take the edge off his extravagant emotions. He’s a walking raw nerve. Me, my drug of choice is booze (the good stuff, naturally) but Peter always was braver - and dumber - than me. Got picked up by the cops once, trashed out of his mind. I’m pretty sure there were drugs involved though he was lucky the cops didn’t find any on him and simply brought him home. I’m sure they were swayed by that choir boy face of his and he probably got their life stories in the car on the way home. He was luckier still that Ma and Dad were out of town and I was home to vouch for him. For most of his teens, I half-expected that Peter would sooner or later be that dumbass guy who’d hold a bag of weed, or worse, for a friend and get busted with it. It never happened. Once he decided he was going to nursing school, he calmed down, got good grades, a job, an apartment. I thought he was safe.

***

  
He really did it. He saved the cheerleader. It didn’t make the national news but after he called me, I found the stories on the internet. One girl dead, gruesomely decapitated, and another one escaped. Peter was found at the scene drenched in blood, but it turned out it was his own. The girl backed up his story, said he helped her get away and then shoved the bad guy off a roof. What is it about my brother and rooftops? The killer vanished and Peter was detained until the cops had to release him for lack of evidence.

I never got the whole story from him. He looked like hell when I picked him up at police headquarters, pale, sweaty, his face and t-shirt stained with dried blood. I can’t say where all that blood came from because he didn’t have a mark on him. “Did you get it out of your system?” I asked. He started rambling about this girl and that guy and the cop trying to read his mind and how “I think they’re like us.” He was stumbling like a drunk. There was something he kept saying he was supposed to stop. Hasn’t he done enough, racing across the country to martyr himself for a girl he never met? I didn’t see it coming when Peter collapsed. I guess I was too pissed off at him for playing superhero and I almost didn’t catch him when he fell. The last thing he muttered was something about a bomb. I tried not to freak out. “Breathe, Peter!” That wasn’t rhetorical; he literally stopped breathing and I think I did too until the ambulance arrived and the EMTs took over.

The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s got a raging fever and he’s comatose but there’s no infection and the MRI and CT scan are normal. No brain tumor or trauma.

I don’t know who’s driving me more crazy, Ma or Simone. Ma’s acting like the sheer fact of being a Petrelli, almost New York royalty, should mean that the doctors can cure Peter and they weren’t bothering to try until she snapped her manicured fingers. This whole damn thing is Simone’s fault because she wouldn’t listen. When I asked if she really believes all this lunacy about paintings that tell the future, her answer was that she believes in Peter. What is she, freaking Tinker Bell? Clap your hands if you believe and he’ll wake up? I trusted her to help ground him and instead she showed him a promotional flyer of the painting I tried to hide from him and encouraged him to fly (the old-fashioned way, in a plane). Now here he is and it seems nobody can do a damn thing for him. This is why I didn’t want to know about superpowers. Nothing good can come of them.

I wish Simone would quit mooning around, bringing flowers my brother can’t appreciate. Or were they for Ma? She kind of reminds me of a lion with that wild hair and those green eyes. I’ll say this for Peter, he’s got good taste in women, at least in their looks, although if she did bring the flowers for Ma it was a smart move. Ma stationed herself by Peter’s bedside like a grieving Queen Mother, commanding the doctors. Simone’s known my brother for what, a few months? She doesn’t get to look so stricken when she’s the reason he’s in that hospital bed. She should go and take Ma with her. The two of them need to leave me in peace to figure out how to end this insanity. If anyone can help Peter, it should be me.

***

The good news is Peter recovered. The bad news is he’s disappeared. I found him and then he took off again. He’s got a new power. Invisibility. He’s like a power sponge although Dr. Suresh, the son of the guy who wrote that book Peter found in the library, said he’s more of a mosaic. He absorbs other people’s powers by changing his DNA or something crazy like that. Goddamnit. When I find my brother, I’m going to lock him up. For his own good.

***

How the hell am I supposed to run a campaign with all this shit going on? I’m behind in the polls but Linderman assures me I’m going to win. Heidi’s a rock. I don’t deserve her and every time I look at her, all I see is me bailing out of the car while she slams into a cement girder and ends up paralyzed. Today Peter showed up, literally out of nowhere, crying and distraught. His girlfriend is dead. I didn’t like her but I wouldn’t have wished that on her. Apparently her unbalanced future-painting ex was waving a gun around and he shot her.

Every kid wishes for superpowers but nobody ever thinks through the consequences. In real life, the bad guys win. Not always but enough to make you question if there’s any real justice or fairness in the world. No matter what powers you have, they have their own weapons to bring you down.

I’m tired and I’m going home to my wife and kids. I have to keep all of this from Heidi. She has enough to deal with without worrying that I’ve lost my mind.

***

I have another kid. Her name is Claire and she’s sixteen, blonde and beautiful like her mother. She’s one of them. Or us, I guess I should say. I’m one of them too, aren’t I? Ever since I started my campaign, I don't meet normal people anymore. Coincidences sprout like chia pets on steroids and none of it makes any sense. Like how about this one: Claire’s the girl my brother rescued in Texas.

When Meredith disappeared all those years ago, Claire was adopted but recently Claire tracked her down. Claire's adopted dad has an interesting career: he hunts people with these abilities we have. Weird huh? After Meredith’s call, Ma told me not to get involved. Focus on my campaign. Ha! Who can focus with all this lunacy swirling around me like a malevolent fog? Anyway, I took Ma’s advice and paid Meredith off, thinking that was the last of it. I delivered the check in person, which I’m sure Ma wouldn’t have approved of but it was the least I could do. Meredith is still beautiful, but she’s brittle, not like the laughing girl I knew. It would never have worked with us anyway, so why am I feeling guilty? I’m not paying her to keep quiet, I’m paying for all the years that I didn’t know my daughter was alive. Okay maybe I am trying to buy Meredith’s silence. So what? I’ve got a campaign to run and an illegitimate kid is more than a little inconvenient. How the hell would I explain the twisted chain of events?

Claire ended up here because her adoptive dad was shielding her ability from the people he works for. They found out, and he tried to smuggle Claire out of the country with one of his people. She bolted and turned up at Peter’s apartment, seeking the only person she thought she could trust. Instead she met my mother and that must have been some scene, but a kid who manages to slip away from a seasoned agent and find her way to New York City alone? Ma may have met her match.

Are there ever the right circumstances to meet your long-lost illegitimate daughter when you’re running for public office? Guess not. But it can’t get any worse than having her show up in search of Peter, unaware of his relationship to me and to herself, only to find him dead on Ma’s sitting room couch. I guess I buried the lead here, didn’t I? At least I won’t be burying my brother, not unless I wring his neck myself.

I raced over there when Ma called me. She hadn’t told me what I would find. All she said was, “Nathan, I need you. Come home.” She sounded about as hysterical as she ever could, which was not very, but I know her. “Ma? What is it?” I asked.

“It’s Peter.” I detected a barely-there catch in her stoic voice.

“Of course it is.” Peter’s penchant for drama was always how he snagged his share of attention from our parents.

“Please, Nathan.”

“Okay, Ma. I’m on my way.”

When I arrived, I was greeted by the sight of Peter’s lifeless body sprawled on the couch. A gruesome line of blood snaked across his forehead and when I approached him, I could see that his hair was matted with more dried blood and his eyes were dull and sightless. Other than his eyes, he didn’t look dead and I instinctively hugged him while memories of him as a little kid marched through my mind. That’s always the worst part of losing people. The retrospective video in your head starts to play on automatic and there’s no shutting it off.

So there I was, failing to process how my brother could be dead when, with uncanny timing, my daughter re-entered my life. Claire asked to see him and her tearful plea - “I came all this way to see him” - was enough to soften Ma’s stony resolve and Ma made me step aside. Thank God she did because Claire knew something we didn’t. She found the shard of glass embedded in Peter’s skull and pulled it out, instantly reviving him. If I live to be a hundred years old, I don’t think I’ll ever experience anything as bizarre or emotionally jarring. He was dead. And now he’s not. It’s that mosaic DNA he has; he picked up Claire’s ability to heal. Apparently neither of them can die, as long as they don’t get whacked in the back of the head.

Everyone else acted like Peter’s death and resurrection were an everyday occurrence. But that huge piece of glass was in my brother’s head for Christ’s sake. After he showered and came to see me in the study, it was as if it had never happened. My mother and Claire were squabbling over Ma taking Claire to Paris and Peter was back to talking about the bomb that he might or might not be. These are the kinds of conversations we have now. Peter is pretty calm about having been dead. I would have expected him to be pacing around the room going on about it the way he did the day he told me he could fly. “Dead! Nathan I was dead!” That would have been more like him. Instead, his only comment was, “What do you do with something that killed you?” I told him to put it under his pillow, and that was much more cavalier than I felt.

Peter’s Lazarus act, meeting my superpowered daughter, finding out her adoptive father chases people like us - the bombshells were pelting me all day and there was one more. It turns out Ma knows about abilities. She’s known for a long time.

My campaign? What fucking campaign? I feel like I’m the only one mourning someone who isn’t dead. People don’t rise from the dead, but then again, they don’t fly or turn invisible, either. Except now they do. I didn’t dream it. It was real. My brother was dead. I felt the absence of a second heartbeat to match the one exploding in my chest when I held his dead body in my arms. Just because Peter can now undo death doesn’t mean I’m able to magically rewind the sick, empty dread in my gut. What am I supposed to do with the wreckage of a tragedy that never really happened?

 

***

Linderman and I have the most fucked up relationship, second only to my relationship with my mother. I hate him. He corrupted my father. He tried to have me killed. He nearly succeeded in killing my wife and every day that I see her in that chair, I want to wrap my hands around his wrinkly neck and squeeze the life out of the bastard. And yet, he owns me. He’s the single biggest donor to my campaign and the Petrelli family fortune is more than a little indebted to his criminal enterprise. So when the FBI asked me to go see him and wear a wire, I jumped at the chance to take him down.

I flew out to Vegas and the first person I ran into was that weird Japanese guy, trying to get in to see Linderman about a sword, of all things. That guy cracks me up. “Frying man! Whoosh!” I got him past security and that was the only useful thing I managed. The next person I met was Nikki, the gorgeous blonde I spent the night with the last time I was in Vegas. The coincidences continue to pile up. She had a gun, told me the FBI guys were dead and Linderman was onto me. She suggested I knock her out and take the gun. I guess there’s a first time for everything because I’ve never punched a woman before.

Linderman had to know I had the gun and was there to shoot him. He’s like Dad, so effortlessly cool he could turn his back on me as if people showing up to kill him is a regular occurrence, no big deal. That probably does happen all the time, now that I think about it. Linderman bustled around the kitchen making pot pies and talking about vegetables. I felt like I was in a gangster flick, a bad one with stupid dialogue. Even my sweaty hand making the gun slippery in my grasp was a cliche, but I couldn’t help it - I was nervous as hell. I chickened out, too. He knew I would. It would have been suicide and I’m not brave enough for that, not even as a service to humanity. I should have asked myself, “What would Peter do?” But his methods could never work for me. Peter wouldn’t have gone there with a gun. He probably would have helped Linderman make pot pies and tried to understand him.

I’m not sure why Linderman didn’t have his guys grab me and drop me in a river. Instead he escorted me to a madman’s gallery of prophetic art, including paintings by that guy, Isaac. There was a painting of me, furtive and glowering in the shadows of the oval office. Do I really look like that much of a creep? Linderman knows all about the bomb and he’s convinced it’s going to be Peter. He claimed to be a humanitarian and said that New York’s destruction would be a catalyst for healing. Some fucking healing! He’s insane and I told him that.

Then he showed me what can only be the final coincidence in this superhero freakshow. He’s one of them. One of us. Linderman, the crime boss who disposes of people as casually as tossing out a used kleenex, is a healer. The wonders can cease now.

***

It’s hard to believe sometimes that Peter is a Petrelli, until he does something conniving. It’s a natural, God-given talent we Petrellis are blessed with. Claire has it too. Her blonde hair and blue eyes may set her apart from the rest of us but her coloring can’t disguise her Petrelli calling-card. There must be an ancestor we don’t know about, probably someone Dad’s ashamed of, because Claire and Peter have a reckless, idealistic gene, too, that bypassed the rest of us. I haven't known Claire long enough to vouch for her loyalty, but I’ve seen rescued shelter dogs less loyal than Peter. For all of his raging against Dad, he’s the one who balked at the idea of prosecuting Linderman because Dad was so enmeshed in Linderman’s web that it would have brought Dad down with him.

I can tell Claire is sizing me up and I don’t think she’s impressed. She thinks my brother hung the moon and I guess I can’t argue with that after he faced down the super villain and tossed the guy off a roof to rescue her. What have I done except try to hide her so my campaign isn’t tarnished? I guess I shouldn't count on a new tie for Father's Day.

I’ve seen how Claire watches us, probably trying to figure out who’s in charge. I am, of course. But she doesn’t trust me. I understand that. I’m not an emotional guy. I play poker, Peter plays hearts. I’m a shark, he’s a minnow. I know he has the heart of a lion, not to belabor the animal metaphor. I’ve always known that. He’s the defender of underdogs, the guy who takes punches meant for someone else. He was the only one who talked to Dad the way he did, the only one who openly challenged him. I respect that. But now Peter needs to learn a few things from the grown-ups, like how to lay low and cover his ass while people who understand how the world works figure out what’s going on and what to do about it. Instead he keeps running around trying to save the world and picking up more powers he doesn’t know how to control. I’m trying to keep Claire safe and make sure my brother doesn’t get us all killed. I appreciate that he looks up to me but I wish for once in his goddamn life he’d listen to me.

***

Peter can’t be the bomb. It doesn’t make any sense. I never wanted anything to do with these powers and I still don’t. But if it’s as inescapable as it seems, then there must be a reason. Why would my brother have all of these powers if not to do something exceptional? Not blowing up New York. It’s absurd. My mother talks about destiny. According to her, my destiny is to piece the hearts of Americans back together after its most iconic city is destroyed. Peter’s destiny is to be the bearer of destruction. But why? Why him? Why me?

I’ll admit I often got suckered by Dad’s flattery, all that “you’re the first-born son” bullshit. Being the buffer between him and Peter wasn’t all altruistic; sometimes it was a way to play both ends against the middle. Dad’s divide and conquer strategy only put him on the wrong side of the equation, making Peter more loyal to me instead of me more loyal to Dad. Now Ma is trying the same tactic. I know it’s different this time. Dad did it to cement his own power. Ma thinks she’s saving the world. Why does everyone suddenly think they know what the world needs? I sure as hell don’t know.

Ma says Peter’s healing means the explosion won’t kill him. That’s supposed to reassure me. Nevermind the lives of seven million New Yorkers. She says we can’t prevent what’s going to happen and saving ourselves is the only answer, so we can rebuild something better. ‘Out of all bad comes something good’ is the kind of thing we say in the aftermath of tragedy. We rationalize it to avoid falling into despair. Saying it with foreknowledge of what’s about to happen sounds dangerously close to masterminding the tragedy. Ma insists it’s not like that; she and Linderman aren’t in control of the bomb, they’re merely trying to secure the best outcome.

I keep seeing that painting of myself in the White House. I’ve never believed in destiny before, but that guy’s other paintings came true. I suppose Ma’s right that it is up to me, knowing what I know, to lead the way. If I only I knew how. I thought I knew the difference between right and wrong but these powers have changed everything.

***

_Summer 1986_

The taxi crawled through heavy midtown traffic, lurching a few feet forward only to slam to a halt when the volume of cars on Sixth Avenue left no opening for it to shimmy through on its way uptown to my parents’ home. I jiggled my leg, impatient to be out of the car and back in the embrace of my family. At this rate, I could probably walk faster and I would have if I hadn’t had a duffle bag and my footlocker in the trunk. Finally the cab pulled up to the curb and I grabbed my things, paid the driver and approached my house. I hadn't been home since Christmas and it was strange to be arriving at the place I’d grown up as if I were a visitor, which I guessed was what I was now, after completing my first year at Annapolis.

The front door swung open and a small, dark blur came flying at me. I barely had time to drop my luggage before he flung himself into my arms, all knobby knees and pointy elbows. “Hey, Pete, let me breathe,” I murmured into into the messy mop of hair tickling my nose, but I didn’t pull away or loosen the stranglehold of his arms around my neck. God, it was good to be home!

“I missed you so much, Nathan,” he said, pronouncing my name correctly while he buried his face in my shoulder. No more “Nafan.” I was going to miss that. “Okay, okay, I’m glad to see you, too. C’mon, give me a hand with my stuff?” When I set him down, he tried to lift my duffle bag and ended up dragging it into the house. I walked behind him with my footlocker in my arms. Peter dropped the duffle bag in the foyer and I did the same with the footlocker, knowing Ma would bitch about that later. At the moment, I didn’t care. I could smell dinner cooking from the kitchen - my first home-cooked meal in months. The luggage could wait.

“Where’s Ma? Is Dad home from work?” I asked Peter. He rolled his eyes like the impish six year old that he was. “They're in the den. Dad’s mad at me. Again. Maybe when he sees you, he’ll forget all about me.”

“How could anyone forget about you?” I squeezed the back of his neck, reminding myself all over again that I was back where I belonged, among family.

“I wish he did.”

I didn’t get a chance to question him about it because my parents emerged from the den and before they could compose their faces to welcome me, I caught a flash of resignation in my mother’s eyes and an expression on my father’s face that told me he’d won whatever disagreement they were having. Dinner was pleasant enough. My parents wanted stories and I had plenty of them. My brother was quiet and a few times, I noticed my mother glancing at him with concern. Dad didn’t look his way at all.

When I put Peter to bed that night, I tried to pry it out of him but he kept asking for me to read another book. Halfway through the fourth story, his breathing slowed and became deeper. I slid my arm out from under his head, and stood up to stretch out the kinks from lying with my brother practically on top of me. “‘Night, Pete,” I whispered against his cheek as I bent to kiss him.

I brought my things up to my bedroom before Ma could complain and while I was emptying out the duffle bag, I heard a low tap at my door.

“May I come in, Nathan? I’d like to speak with you.” I opened the door wider for her and Ma walked in and sat on my bed, running her hands over the bedspread.

“I remember when I bought this comforter,” she said. “Do you?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Come sit with me,” she beckoned and I obeyed.

“You were fourteen. You’d just started shaving and you asked if we could re-do your room. You said, and I quote, ‘Ma, I’m too old for this superhero crap.’ I told you to watch your language.” I didn’t remember but it made me smile and Ma smiled back and smoothed a stray hair off my forehead. I’d missed her affectionate grooming gestures.

“That sounds about right for us. What’s got you all nostalgic over bedding?” I asked.

“You’ve grown up, Nathan,” she said. “Your father and I are so proud of you and yet I can’t help missing the boy you were.”

“That’s sweet, Ma. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“Actually, no. It’s your father. He’s always been demanding. You know that. He wants the best for you boys and I know he’s been hard on you. I tried to protect you and he always said I was too soft.”

“I appreciate it, but if that was your idea of being soft on me, I’d hate to see you get tough.”

“You're strong,” she said, in her famous matter-of-fact tone that matched her direct gaze. “I did the best I could.”

“You did fine. I’m fine. Really. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about.” My mother was never one to wear her heart on her sleeve but at the moment she wasn’t trying to hide the troubled look in her eyes.

“Oh.” I said, thinking back to how quiet my brother had been at dinner. “Peter told me Dad was mad at him. Made it sound like it’s a regular occurrence. He didn’t say what Dad was angry about.”

A soft sigh made me glance back at her. “I’m afraid your father has started the nonsense with Peter. Thank goodness he’s far too busy to spend as much time with him as he did with you, but when he is home, Arthur seems to make up for lost time. Your brother is not you, Nathan. He’s sensitive.”

“Yeah and I’m Attila the Hun. If I remember correctly, Dad didn’t start the routine with me til I was ten. How many push-ups can he expect a little kid to do?”

“Don’t be flip.” Ma swatted my knee. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. Your father believes everything is earned. Even love.”

“Right.” I said. I had never enjoyed nor agreed with my father’s methods - who would? But I had accepted them as the price for seeing myself through his eyes as the man he wanted me to be. “And Peter wants the love first. Give him that and he’d do anything Dad asked and more. But Dad wants obedience.”

“Exactly,” Ma agreed. “They’re like oil and water except that they’re alike, too...stubborn. Petrellis to the core, both of them. Your grandfather was the same way.”

Grandpa Petrelli had been a tough old bird to the end, nothing grandfatherly about him.

“Peter’s tried to run away twice. Your father doesn’t know or he would chain him to his bed.” My mother watched my face for my reaction. I didn't think she was exaggerating though I doubted that Dad would have literally tied him up...maybe locked him in his room.

“Jeez, are you kidding me? He’s only six years old. Where did he go?”

“The bell tower of the church. He snuck up there after school. The police found him the first time. The second time, I knew where to look. I’m afraid he’ll find a better hiding place the next time.”

“Ok so you want me to talk to Dad?” It wasn’t a conversation I would relish.

“Good heavens, no!” My mother’s eyes went wide at the suggestion. “I’ve already tried that. Many times. I want you to talk to your brother. If anyone can get through to him, it’s you.”

“What am I supposed to say? Quit running away or Dad’s gonna lock you up?”

She rose from the bed, smoothing her skirt. Even at eleven o’clock at night, my mother didn’t walk around the house in pajamas. “You’ll think of something, Nathan. You always do.” She kissed the top of my head. “I feel better already. Good night, dear.”

She was wrong that I’d find the right words to make Peter understand. I tried talking to my brother. I really did. I didn’t have high hopes, though. This was a person who slept with stuffed animals.

“Pete, you gotta knuckle under and do what Dad wants,” I said to him the next day over ice cream sundaes in the family room. Our parents weren’t home, so it was just the two of us and Millie, who served the sundaes and made herself scarce. I’d told her that I needed to have a chat with my brother. “You can’t win this by doing it your way.” He was measuring me with those soft hazel eyes of his and it made me feel like shit. He trusted me to make it better and I was failing.

“Why doesn’t he like me, Nathan? Am I a bad kid?”

Those words and the way he said them, in a small, trembling voice, broke me. Most of the time, I looked up to my Dad. He was everything I wanted to be. But I remembered my own trials with him and I could only imagine how much harder it must be for Peter, being so little and not able to understand where Dad was coming from. That and, well, I was afraid Peter wasn’t entirely wrong.

“No, no, no. You’re a great kid. Dad likes you just fine. He loves you. You’re his son. He’s just trying to make you strong. He did the same stuff with me.”

“He did?”

“Sure,” I said, hoping to reassure him. “I hated it, too, just like you.”

“What did you do?”

“I did what he said, Pete. I did the exercises. I studied the stuff he made me read and I memorized it so I could answer his questions.”

“And then he liked you?” He dropped his gaze from my face to his ice cream, but he seemed to have lost interest in eating it and merely swirled his spoon through it. “Cuz he does. I can tell.”

“He liked me already. And he likes you so quit thinking that way,” I said, trying to lighten his mood with a friendly jab at his shoulder. “You just gotta do what he says.”

Peter blew an exasperated puff of air that made the front of his hair flutter. ““I try to do it. But my arms get really tired and sore. I get mad and he makes me do even more. If I don’t do the push-ups right, he kicks my arm so I fall and I have to start all over.”

“Aw jeez, he does that? Oh man, I’m sorry. C’mere.” He shuffled over to me and I pulled him into a hug and just held him, tousling his hair and wishing I knew what to do. I knew Dad could be a prick, but this was … it was too much. I held my baby brother tight and he hugged back, pressing his little face into my shirt while I tried to swallow my anger. I wanted to choke my father, knock him down and pummel him and see how he liked being the less powerful one for a change. But even then, I didn’t think I could. I wasn't strong enough, and not just physically.

“I have an idea. You know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna practice. You’ll get strong and then you’ll do those push-ups like it’s nothing. And I’ll keep you out of Dad’s hair as much as I can while I’m home. How’s that sound?” I grasped his shoulders and pulled away so I could look at him. He was so small, and so damned earnest and cute. How could anyone resist him? How could Dad not adore him the way I did?

“Okay,” He said, exhaling as a trace of relief battled with wariness to take control of his expression. “But what happens when you leave again?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m not leaving for awhile and by the time I do, you’re gonna be a beast. A snarling push-up monster.”

He laughed then and it was like Christmas and the Fourth of July. The kid was just freaking adorable. “Grrrrr!” He growled, baring his teeth and waving his arms like an angry bear flashing its claws.

“That’s the spirit! Don’t hurt me, man!” I backed away in mock terror and he jumped on me. I let him wrestle me to the floor and we rolled around, growling and roaring until we wore ourselves out. I was flat on my back when Peter rolled off of me and crawled forward to lie beside me on the rug, resting his head on my outstretched arm.

“You’re the best brother ever, Nathan.” He snuggled closer and threw an arm across my chest.

“I try to be, Pete. I try.”

My strategy worked for weeks. It helped that Dad was busy with work and Peter spent his days at summer camp while I interned at our congressman’s office. It had to happen eventually, though and sure enough, Dad caught on to what we were up to.

“Are you trying to usurp my role, Nathan?” Dad asked me one night after Peter had gone to bed. We were in Dad’s study, the site of our many chess games and his lectures and quizzes on history, politics and war battles, the ones he’d seen during his military service and the famous battles of the past. Dad sat behind his big, polished desk, his papers neatly arranged in a pile on the left and his hands folded in the center of the desk. I could feel a lecture coming on.

“What do you mean?” I asked, playing dumb. My poker face was a skill I’d learned from watching him.

“Peter has a father. I am his parent. Not you. I think sometimes you forget that.” Dad’s expression was as bland as my own but that didn’t mean anything. Even when he was angry, he rarely lost his composure. It was one of the things I admired about him, although I didn’t much like being on the receiving end of it.

I waited for him to say more. Dad’s speeches tended to unfold as if he were gauging the effect of his words and rewriting them in his head. Interrupting before he was done was never a good idea.

“I saw you doing push-ups with him. It hasn’t escaped me that you’ve been keeping him busy and getting him out of the house. What’s your endgame here?” Dad’s bushy eyebrows rose to mirror his questioning inflection.

“No game, Dad. I’m just trying to help. I know he’s been giving you a hard time. I thought I could make him see the good in it, make it fun and get him stronger.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s work, to stiffen that spine of his and teach him to yield to authority. You,” he said, jabbing his finger in my direction though I wasn’t close enough for him to actually prod me with it, “are not the authority here. Don’t let your training go to your head. You’re not an officer yet. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Yes…?”

“Yes, sir. Does that mean you want me to stop?”

My father stared at me across his desk, and this, too, was a familiar routine. I was supposed to meet his gaze and hold it without any challenge in my eyes. After a few beats, he’d relax the penetrating stare but not look away. That was my role, to know when to surrender.

“How many push-ups can he do?” Dad was swiveling in his chair now, which meant he wasn’t angry anymore and I could let the breath I’d been holding escape, soundlessly. Never let ‘em see you sweat, another of my father’s lessons that I’d learned to use on him.

“He’s up to twenty-five in one go. After that he loses form so I let him rest and then do as many more as he can.”

“Fine. You can continue,” Dad said. “But do not make a game of it. No rewards. You can tell him when he’s done well. He should be doing fifty by the time we leave for the beach house.”

“Will do.” I was relieved because it meant we didn’t have to sneak around anymore. Dad would lay off Peter for a while, but I was surprised, too. Dad had always accused Ma of coddling me and he complained that both of us spoiled Peter. It wasn’t the first time my father had called me out for trying to parent my brother. I didn’t want to be Peter’s father, though, and he wasn’t a football that I was trying to run into the end-zone to score points against Dad. I genuinely liked spending time with my brother. I always had. Could I help it if I handled him better than Dad did? I knew what he needed.

What was Dad’s unexpected change of heart about? Just because I wasn’t competing with him didn’t mean he was going to let me win. He always had a strategy. It wasn’t likely that he was conceding because he had decided my way was better. It was but Dad would never admit that. I could be tough, too. I just knew how to make people trust me, especially Peter. I’m pretty sure my father didn’t get where he is without learning how to use his charm, too, but when it came to us, his family, he didn’t want to. It wasn’t about trust. Not for Dad.

“Now give your old man a hug, son. I’m proud of you.” He stepped around his desk and I rose to embrace him. “You’ll make a fine officer, Nathan. Just remember not to go too easy on your men. You want their respect, not their friendship.”

“Thanks, Dad. That means a lot to me.” That was the truth even if I knew by then that Dad’s pride in me was the coin of the realm and there was always a payback.

It wasn’t the first time I’d had to get between my father and my brother and it wouldn’t be the last, not by a long shot. It had been that way nearly from the day Peter was born. My father didn’t seem to understand that kids weren’t clones. While it was flattering that he thought so well of me that he wanted a carbon copy, I didn't want to divide my loyalties. I loved my father. I’d worked hard to earn his regard and I would do almost anything to keep it. My brother wasn’t one of my men, though. He was just a kid, and I didn't want or need his respect. He relied on me and damn near worshipped me and all he asked in return was for me to love him. I wanted to keep that, too.

***

  
_Autumn 2006_

I’m supposed to catch him when he falls. I didn't know that it would literally be my role when I cradled him in my arms that first time and marveled at the spill of dark hair across his forehead. I didn't ask for the job but somebody has to take care of Peter. For some reason, it’s always been me. I don’t deserve his faith in me but I lap it up anyway. We’ve disagreed, we’ve argued, we’ve let each other down. It happens in any relationship but underneath every angry word, there’s always been that bond of trust. Until today. Now it’s gone. He knows I’m leaning towards fate. Mine, not his. It’s not that I want any of this to be true, but if it is, I’m the man for the job. Dad couldn’t have known how it would play out but this was the moment he and my mother had prepared me for my whole life.

How do I know what’s right, whether to accept the inevitability of what Ma says is destiny or to believe in someone who’s as erratic as my brother? If faith and love alone could save the day, then the decision would be obvious. My brother is everything that’s good in the world but he’s not cut out to be a superhero no matter what he thinks. All those powers and he’s still that anxious kid needing me to help him fix his latest problem. I wish I could support his conviction but I’ve spent too much time saving him from himself. It’s hard to fathom that his destiny is to destroy New York and every bit as hard to imagine he’s the one who can save it.

Today is the day that Ma’s dreams and Isaac’s paintings predicted, and true to Linderman’s word, I won the election last night. The thrill of victory has nothing on the horror of impending doom. Ma is waiting for me to join her in the helicopter that will transport my family out of the city and away from the apocalypse she’s foreseen. It’s a bleak vision, one in which she sees no choice but to let one son detonate and kill millions while she pins her hopes on her other son. Me.

Linderman visited me yesterday to crow about the election and just to seal the deal, he did something to Heidi. I wanted to kill him when I saw his hands on her and the terror on her face. But then he let go and shortly after he left, Heidi discovered she could wiggle her feet. She tried to get out of her chair and though her legs were wobbly from months of inactivity, it was clear they were working. That bastard! He put her in that chair and now I’m supposed to be thankful that he healed her, a quid pro quo to get my final buy in on his scheme.

If I follow my mother and Linderman's plan, I’ll unite a grief-stricken nation, right into the White House if my mother’s prophecy proves accurate. It’s a helluva way to achieve one’s lifelong ambition. Talk about “be careful what you wish for” because I’d also be consigning seven million people to their deaths and letting my brother take the rap. If the explosion doesn't kill Peter, the guilt will.

My head is pounding and my mind keeps playing Claire’s words against my mother’s, a polyphonic rhythm beating inside my skull. The voice of hope versus the voice of doom. “The future isn’t written in stone!” Claire said. _There’s another way?_ Claire seems to think so and she was desperate enough to prove it by crashing through the window to escape me and Ma. People in my family are big on dramatic exits.

“Am I my brother's keeper?” That question haunts me, a classic of all sibling relationships I guess. Peter’s always been greedy for my attention, and once again his needs collide with my wants. I don’t always say yes, at least not right away. His middle name might as well be ‘persistent’ because he never gives up, and me, I always give in. Why? Because it’s what he expects. He believes in me, or he used to. It was more than I believed in myself. Unlike our parents who thought I was destined for greatness but seemed to accept as a matter of course that I’d have to step on other people to get there, Peter didn’t care about my status or my accomplishments. In his eyes, I was already a hero, a great man and a good one, too.

It's intoxicating. It’s bewildering too because I don't know where such faith comes from. When I look in the mirror I'm pretty sure the guy I see is not the person Peter thinks I am. I don't know if I’ve ever been worthy of that kind of trust. I don't know if I can be.

Peter tried to tell me what was happening but I brushed him aside. I didn't want to feel the pull of fate, wanted no part of his heroic quest. I have my own quest and it doesn’t involve superpowers. Me, flying around saving the world? I don't think so. I don't know why I’m able to fly and mostly I keep my feet planted on earth - I’m a big fan of gravity. But Peter leaping off that building, Claire tossing herself out a window...it’s all connected, as Peter likes to say. I have my part to play in all of this whether I like it or not.

A breeze is blowing through the window where Claire’s unorthodox exit left a frame of jagged glass. I know what I have to do. Another Bible story comes to mind, not about brothers but the sentiment fits. _Whither thou goest, I will go_. To the stratosphere if necessary.

 _Am I my brother's keeper?_   “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.”

I believe it’s time for me to fly.

***


	3. Chapter 3

_Summer 1979_

 

On a rainy Saturday night when I was almost twelve years old, I overheard Ma saying my name as I passed the den on my up to bed. I had spent the day ducking my father to avoid whatever form of torture he might dream up for me - a lecture on some boring book as if school work wasn’t bad enough, a game of chess, one of the few things that could make me wish the weekend would hurry past, or, worst of all, Dad standing over me like a vulture sniffing out fresh meat while I did my exercises. I was lucky that day. Dad worked in his study until dinner and now he and Ma were having their usual evening drink.

“Nathan will adjust perfectly well, Arthur. I’m more concerned about how demanding you are with him. You drive that boy so hard.” _No kidding._

“I'll tell you what, Angela. I won't interfere with your efforts to teach our son which fork to use and how to make small talk at your soirées if you'll stay out of my attempts to make a man out of him. He needs toughening up, not coddling.”

“He’s eleven, dear. There’s plenty of time for him to be a man.”

 

A creak in the floorboards startled me and, not wanting to be found eavesdropping, I slunk upstairs. As I brushed my teeth, I inspected myself in the mirror for facial hair, sweeping a hand over my jaw and turning my head from side to side. I rinsed and spat, returned my toothbrush to its holder and raised an arm in search of any hair growth in my armpit, but I was as hairless as a stone. Making a fist with my right hand, I flexed my bicep and pressed down on the muscle with my other hand. It wasn't as hard as I would have liked it to be but it wasn't a soft-boiled egg either. I might not be as strong - yet - as Dad, but I wasn't weak.

Slipping into my bed and pulling the covers up around me, I replayed my mother's words and tried to guess what she had meant. Were my parents getting a divorce? Was that what I had to adjust to? It was hard enough being Arthur Petrelli’s kid. I couldn't imagine what Ma had to put up with. Then again, my mother wasn't exactly easy-going either. I adjusted my pillow and switched my thoughts to the list I had been making of things I wanted for my upcoming birthday. That at least was more fun than trying to figure out my parents.

I celebrated my twelfth birthday with the usual family party and a few friends I was allowed to invite. My cousins and friends gathered around me on the family room’s thick wool rug with the pile of wrapped presents in the center. My parents sat nearby on matching striped chairs. The other adults fanned out on the sofa and loveseats that surrounded the carpet. When Ma gave me permission to open my gifts, I went for the biggest box first. Yeah! It was the new Atari game I had wanted. “Wicked!” My best friend, Jimmy, grinned, showing the gaps in his teeth where his molars had yet to emerge. “Let's hook it up and play!”

I looked around at my father. “Can I, Dad?”

“May I.” Ma corrected.

“Sure, Ma, you can play, too,” I quipped, earning one of Ma’s affectionate slaps on the cheek.

When the presents had all been opened and I had made the rounds to thank everyone, the other kids and I waited while Dad set up the new game system.

“Wow, Mr. Petrelli, you did that like a pro!” my friend, Anthony, remarked. “It takes my dad like, forever, and he gets really grumpy.” Dad smiled at Anthony and then he winked at me, showing off. It's not like I didn't know he had the magic touch.

After the guests had all gone, Ma asked me to join my father and her in the den before bed. It was a stuffy, formal room, with framed historical documents and Dad’s service medals decorating the walls. A polished metal and glass bar stood near the large bank of windows that were dressed with tasseled yellow drapes. My parents were seated in two of the brown leather club chairs arranged around a low cocktail table. Dad was drinking scotch but instead of her usual red wine, Ma had a tumbler of what looked like water on the table before her.

“Nathan,” my mother said, “Come sit down, dear. Your father and I have one more surprise for you today.”

I slid into a chair. This wasn't the divorce announcement I had been dreading. My parents wouldn't have called it a surprise for me and they wouldn't be looking like a perfect TV couple in a commercial for expensive liquor.

“You know we love you very much, Nathan.” Ma perched on the edge of her chair with her legs crossed at the ankles and her manicured hands clasped over her knee. “We couldn't be happier to have a son like you. But your father and I have felt for quite some time that our family wasn't complete. We've waited so very long to be blessed with another child and now...you're going to be a big brother.”

Oh. That was my surprise? I conjured a smile out of nowhere because clearly my parents expected it. How they could think I’d be excited about their news, I had no idea. What would I do with a baby? It wouldn't even be able to talk for a couple of years. I'd be in college before it was old enough to play baseball or ride a bike.

“What do you think about that, son?” Dad turned his expectant gaze on me.

“It's, uh, great. I'm really happy for you.”  I did my best to inject enthusiasm I didn't feel into my voice. I couldn't think of a less interesting birthday surprise.

***

_December 1979_

 

The baby was born on a Sunday two days before Christmas. It was Millie, our family's housekeeper, who had come into my room that morning, pulled back the curtains and clapped her hands, saying, “Wake up, Nathan. You're a big brother!” She cajoled and prodded me out of bed and into the shower so that I could visit my mother and the baby in the hospital.

I arrived at Ma’s hospital room just in time to see my father kiss her goodbye and plant another kiss on the wrapped bundle cradled in her arms. My father met my quizzical look with a shrug. “Client emergency. Your mother understands.” I watched Dad depart and turned back to regard my mother from the doorway. Ma was wearing a white ruffled nightgown I had never seen before and her hair was partly pulled back, while the rest was loose and neatly brushed. She looked tired, with dark circles beneath her eyes and no makeup except for red lipstick. I was pretty sure I had never seen her without makeup. A  bandage secured a wad of cotton to the inside of her elbow.

“Come in, dear,” she beckoned. “Meet the newest Petrelli.”

Ma’s arm circled my waist as I stood by her bedside and peered down at the only part of the baby I could see. A blanket was wrapped tightly around the baby’s torso and drawn loosely over its head. With its arms and legs hidden, it looked like a larva. Its face was squooshy and red, eyes tightly shut. It had more hair than I had expected.   
  
“I thought newborns were bald.”

“Is that all you can say?” Ma swatted at me playfully. “You haven’t even asked whether you have a brother or a sister.”

“Millie said the same thing,” I answered, ducking Ma’s teasing blows with a grin. “Which is it?”

“A boy, Nathan. You have a brother. You used to beg me all the time for a little brother. And here he is.” Ma squeezed my hand while gazing adoringly at her new son.

“What’s his name?”

“Your father and thought you might like to help choose a name.” Ma smiled up at me. Her joy was infectious and my jaded pre-teen attitude fell away like a childish toy I had outgrown.

“I don’t know anything about picking baby names,” I protested, though I felt a little surge of pride at being included in the choice.

“What is there to know? It’s not a baby name, it’s the name he’ll have all his life.”

I reached for the blanket that enveloped him, gently pulling it back to see more of my baby brother’s face. My brother. I kind of liked the sound of it. Ma was smoothing the baby’s abundant hair with her fingers, but one determined shock kept falling onto his forehead. My brother had a personality already.

“Would you like to hold him?” Ma offered.

“Me?” I squeaked. “What if I drop him?”

“Don’t be silly, you’re not going to drop him. Here,” she said, “hold out your arms.” Ma deposited the baby into my outstretched arms, positioning him close to my chest. She explained how to support his head and left her hand in place until I had him settled. I held my brother stiffly, as if he were a carton of eggs that might crack under the slightest pressure.

“Your father likes the name Anthony. I prefer Matthew. Or Patrick. What do you think?” Ma met my petrified gaze with an amused expression and her easy confidence calmed my nerves.

“I dunno. Either of those sound fine.” I inclined my head, not daring to shrug for fear of jostling the baby.

“Well think about it, dear. We don’t have to decide right this minute. You might be more comfortable in a chair, though.” My mother gestured to the chair behind me and I shuffled slowly backwards, mindful of my cargo. Holding a baby was terrifying.

Ma leaned back against her pillows and closed her eyes and I realized she’d nodded off. The minutes ticked by slower than the last half hour of school on a Friday and my arm went to sleep under the weight of the baby’s head. I wriggled in my chair to reposition him and relieve the pressure. A squawk that seemed too loud for the tiny body that produced it made my heart stutter. Glancing down, I saw that he was fine, breathing in and out. There was a funny quirk to the way his mouth drooped down on only one side, though. _Did I hurt him when I moved_? After what seemed like eons, my mother opened her eyes and turned to look at me. “Are you alright, dear?”

“I’m fine, Ma but I think there's something wrong with the baby’s lip. It looks weird.” Ma was still lying down, gazing at me holding my new brother. She didn’t seem worried.  
  
“It’s nothing, a little area where the nerves are deadened. The doctor says he’ll eventually learn to control it. Have you thought any further about names?”   
  
Relieved by that explanation, I answered. “Yeah, I kind of maybe like the sound of two P’s. Patrick Petrelli. I dunno, though. People might call him Pat.” The thought made me grimace. With a small twitch to once again shift the weight on my arm, I added, “Jeez, this kid sleeps like a rock.”

Just like that it came to me. “I got it, Ma. Peter. Peter Petrelli. Peter means rock, right?”

“Yes, that's right, Nathan. Peter is an outstanding name. Strong, like all of the Petrelli men,” she said.

When I looked at my brother again with his squished face, crooked lip and unruly hair, he opened his eyes and stared. There was a tiny questioning furrow between his eyebrows. I gazed back. I had never before seen an infant this brand new, with his eyes open, looking at me as if he knew me from somewhere but couldn't place where we had met.

We inspected each other's faces. Could he see me? Did his eyes even work yet? “Hey, Pete, whatcha doin’? I'm your big brother.”

***

Peter came home on Christmas Day. It was the quietest Christmas I could remember, with no family parties or company coming and going. My parents said Peter was too young to be around a lot of people and Ma wasn’t ready for visitors yet either.  About a week or so later, I awoke to the sound of my brother yowling. By the angry, desperate sound of it, it had been going on for a while. I tried to ignore it but five more excruciating minutes of it was all I could take; it’s not like I could have gone back to sleep. I padded down the hall to my parents’ room. The door was open but with the shades down, the room had a gray pallor. Only my mother was still in bed, somehow managing to sleep through the racket my brother was making.

“Ma, the baby's crying.” I said as I advanced to the bassinet. “Ma?” I scooped him up, casting a look over my shoulder to where Ma lay beneath a tangle of bedding. I was still nervous holding Peter. I'd just bring him over to Ma. Peter quieted in my arms and that was when I saw it. Several bright red splotches stained Ma’s white bedding. I pulled the comforter away to find my mother lying in a pool of blood.

“Ma!” For a split second, terror turned my legs to cement until I found my voice. “Dad?! Millie!!” I yelled, and that set off another round of wailing from my brother. In a panic, I dashed into the hall, clutching Peter to my chest, and shouted for my father and Millie once more before remembering there was a phone in my parents’ bedroom. First I called 911. The operator told me to put the baby somewhere safe so that she and I could hear one another. I obeyed and gave her our address. Next I dialed Dad's office. It was closed for the holidays but Dad went in some mornings to meet clients. Maybe that was where he’d gone. My hands were shaking; I got the number wrong and tried again, hearing the click and recorded voice of the answering machine. I left a message and prayed Dad would get it. As I replaced the telephone receiver, I saw that Ma was trying to sit up. I wanted to cry with relief that she wasn’t dead.  
  
“No, Ma! Don’t move. You’re bleeding. I called 911.” I picked up Peter again and sat on the edge of the bed away from the blood pooling in the center, patting Ma’s shoulder, helpless to do anything more.

“Sweetheart,” she said, her voice weak and cracking. “Can you do something about that crying? My head is pounding and the screaming is making it worse.”

When the paramedics arrived, all I could do was stand back while the two men barked instructions and information in a language all their own. Within minutes they were carrying my mother out on a stretcher, hooked up to a bunch of tubes and wires. I followed behind, shivering in the chill winter air with my pajama top wrapped around my brother, watching them slide the stretcher into an ambulance. Before getting into the driver’s seat, one of the paramedics asked me if I would be okay and when someone would be home. “I’m fine,” I said, more bravely than I felt. “My Dad should be here soon.” He nodded, swung himself into his seat and the ambulance pulled away.

It felt safe to cry now. Where had Millie gone? When would Dad be home? One of my tears plopped onto Peter’s face and I wiped it away. “Shh, Pete. Shh, it’s okay. I got you,” I said, trying to sound convincing with my own tears mingling with his. 

I carried Peter back inside. The crying was nerve-wracking but it was most likely just the usual baby needs. Back in my parents’ room, I laid him in the bassinet while I looked for supplies, averting my eyes from the bloody mess on my parents’ bed. Peter‘s screams had reached defcon one level while I managed my first diaper change. It was awkward, smelly and gross, but after seeing my mother’s blood, this was nothing. Poop I could handle. I struggled to get the diaper right and gave up. It was on and that was good enough. Next I fumbled with pajamas that had way too many tiny snaps, and tried to get the baby’s arms and legs inside without hurting him. It was like trying to dress a wriggling octopus. Once Peter was changed, his cries died down and he began to hiccup.

Food seemed the next logical requirement. Peter’s hiccups had changed to intermittent whines that were ratcheting up in their intensity. I soothed him with gibberish while I found the bottles Millie had prepared in the fridge and heated one on the stovetop.

By the time I had a bottle ready, Peter was screaming all over again. He must have been ravenous if the way he attacked the bottle were any indication. I had to stop every so often when he’d push it away with his tongue and then cry as though he were being tortured. I finally figured out that he needed to burp in between and I patted his back the way I’d seen my parents do. (Dad wasn’t big on diapers and feeding, but he was a champion baby burper.) When the bottle was empty, Peter burped again and fell asleep on my shoulder. Within moments, my eyelids were drooping, too. I curled up on the couch with Peter on the inside, resting in the crook of my arm, and we slept.

I woke up when I felt Millie smooth a hand across my forehead. “Your dad called from the hospital, Nathan. Your mama is going to be fine. She’ll need to rest for a few weeks, that’s all. It happens sometimes.”

“Someday I’m gonna tell Peter this story,” I said, relieved and grateful for the news of Ma’s condition. All traces of resentment about the baby were gone. “He saved Ma’s life, Milie. If it weren’t for him crying so loud, I wouldn’t have gone to her room.”

“Eight days old and your baby brother’s already a hero.” Millie’s mouth curved in amusement. “And _you_ are a superstar,” she said, looking right into my eyes. “You did real good today. Your parents should be so proud.” She ruffled my hair and coaxed me to the kitchen for a piece of pie.

From that day on, Peter and I were buddies. I’d walk him all through the house, showing him around and naming things for him - my room, my baseball glove and the signed Reggie Jackson bat I had gotten for my birthday. He would get an intense expression of concentration on his face, as if he were trying to figure out how to speak so I’d know that he understood every word. I knew. He liked me.

I overheard my parents talking one evening weeks later, when Ma’s doctor gave her the okay to get out of bed and she was sitting in the den with my dad.

“I'm telling you Angela, it's not normal. A twelve year old boy should not be so interested in a baby.”

“Oh Arthur, it’s a mother’s fondest wish that her children will care for one another,” Ma was saying. “We mustn’t get in the way of that bond. Don’t you remember when you were concerned that Nathan might be jealous? Or that he was too old to bond with an infant?”

I heard Dad’s voice next. “Yes of course. But there is no need for Nathan to be so involved when the baby has you and Millie to look after him. Nathan acts as if Peter is his child. It's not right. A boy his age should be outside running around with his friends.”

“I know, dear,” my mother countered, “but don't you see? Nathan was traumatized. This is his way of taking care of me. I’m proud of him. And I’m certain that once the novelty wears off, Nathan will be more interested in sports and girls than in playing nursemaid to his baby brother.”

I didn't hear my father's response, maybe because he hadn't given one. I sighed and crept away from the den. At least Ma approved of my helping out. She wasn’t ready yet to care for a baby and sure, Millie was there for both of us, but Peter needed his family. Besides, he was a great audience. He didn't care about my grades or my trophies. He just wanted me to pick him up and talk to him. So I did.

***

 

_Winter 2007_

 

I have nothing left but booze and self-pity and they go together like scotch and ice. There’s little else to do but mope around and relive the past. Heidi threw me out. To make matters worse, she got an order of protection against me for breaking into my own goddamn house. I can’t go home, can’t see my kids. She won’t talk to me. I had to step down before even taking my oath as a congressman and I’ve been holed up in Peter’s apartment ever since, waiting for him to show up but the only person who ever does is my mother.

I’m not going to lie. Not to myself at least. Her vision was horrific. The thought of New York in ashes was terrifying. But me, in the White House? There were times I almost believed it would be worth it. I mean, if it were inevitable anyway. The way Ma had told it, it was preordained and there was nothing we could do but accept it and play the hand we were dealt. As Ma so ably pointed out, trying to warn people to evacuate the city wouldn’t have worked. Who would believe us?

It took Claire, a child, to shake me out of my self-centered acquiescence to my mother’s apocalyptic vision. All the talk of fate, destiny and inevitability was just a smokescreen for ambition. I may not bear as much blame as Linderman and my mother, but I’m no hero for intervening when it was too late to prevent my brother from exploding. Peter is dead and once again, I don’t have a scratch on me. I keep catching glimpses of myself in the mirror, seeing the charred carcass I was when I woke up in the hospital. I still can’t figure out how I was healed. Linderman again, maybe? I don’t know. But somehow I’ve been spared, again, while someone else has paid for my ambition and cowardice. First Heidi, now Peter. I keep waiting for my brother to return but it’s been months. In my head, I know he’s gone. Healing or not, nobody could survive a nuclear explosion. If only I could accept that, but my heart tells me lies that I want to believe, trapping me in an endless cycle of hope and despair.

Ma showed up here again today. She urged me to take a shower, throw out the booze and see a therapist. I know she thinks I should have listened to her. The last time she visited, she accused me of killing my brother. Me?! I tried to save him! I saw the pity in Ma’s eyes when she looked at me. Pity and disgust.

“Nathan, pull yourself together.” That's when the words rushed out of me like black bile.

“It's _your_ fault he’s dead. You tried to make me a party to this but I’m not. It was all you. How do you sleep at night?”

I’ll give her this, she’s one cool customer, my mother. She took it calmly and then walked out, leaving only the scent of her expensive perfume in her wake.

“Get help, Nathan,” she said before the door clicked shut behind her.

 

***


	4. Chapter 4

_Spring 2007_

 

Like magic, my journals just turned up in my office. The last time I saw them was in that other office, before everything went to hell at Kirby Square. Probably my mother meddling again. Who knows what kind of message she’s sending by putting these back where I could find them. If she read them, she knows exactly what I think of her, not that I’ve held back in some of our angrier conversations. I’m glad I didn’t bother to document the last few months because other than finding my brother alive, there’s nothing I want to remember. And yet here I am reliving it as if torturing my conscience is a useful or valid form of penance.

The present isn’t much better than the past. Heidi filed for divorce. I called her the day the papers were served and asked to see her. For the first time since throwing me out, she softened and agreed to meet me for a drink. She had a glass of wine. I drank seltzer. I could tell she noticed but she didn’t comment. “Heidi, can’t we try again? For the boys’ sake if not ours?”

If I’m honest, I chose Heidi to please Dad. He approved of her family, her old money connections and social status. That and he’d always preferred brunettes. Me, I gravitate to blondes, but I liked Heidi and I knew my parents would be pleased. Later, I grew to love her. She was good for me, strong and practical, with a way of telling people to go to hell that made them thank her and ask for directions. She charmed my father, stood up to my mother and looked past my brother’s wild rebellion to see his potential. We were good together. I did love her, if not in an all-consuming way. It was steady and grounding and that was enough. But not anymore. I thought I was protecting her by keeping things from her. Or maybe I just didn’t want her opinion when I had so many other people telling me what to do.

“Oh, Nathan!” Her eyes looked bluer than ever with tears about to fall. “I wish we could try again. But I can’t be a part of this - whatever it is you’re involved in. I can’t let the boys be a part of it.”

“I can change. I’ve stopped drinking...” I leaned across the table and reached for her hands. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“How can I answer that when I don’t even know what’s going on? You’ve done nothing but lie and keep secrets.”

“I’ll tell you everything. Whatever you want to know...but I have to warn you, you’ll find it hard to believe.”

“See, that’s what I mean!” She shook my hands off and threw hers in the air. “There’s no room in your life for me. We both know it. I just can’t stand by while you run all over the country doing God only knows what. I’m done with all that drama. I’m so sorry, Nathan.”

A man’s got to know when he’s beaten. I nodded and tried another tack. “At least, lift the order of protection so that I can be a father to Monty and Simon. Please, Heidi.”

“I’ll think about it. I really will. But you’ve got to show me that you’re settling down. I can’t risk our sons’ emotional equilibrium every time you get … what, chased by mobsters, burned, shot…”

So that’s that. My boys are fine although all I get are supervised visits and I’m becoming a stranger to them.

I can hardly bear to look at my wedding picture, or the photos of my baby boys. Heidi looked so beautiful, Simon and Monty so tiny and precious. We were happy then, innocent of what the future held.

***

_Summer 2007_

 

Peter used to say that we’re all connected, back when all this started. He believed that these abilities weren’t random; they meant something. It turns out that’s true. All of us were bound by an invisible web of family loyalties wrapped in subterfuge and lies. None of us seem able to get it right. Not Parkman nor Suresh, not Hiro, the Haitian, or Tracy. Certainly not me. Our parents lied to us, used us and left us in the dark and instead of breaking the cycle, we double-down on the deceit.

I’m kidding myself that I’m in any shape to run a mission. I couldn't run a lemonade stand when I've barely had time to breathe between disasters that have left my family splintered. My wife, my kids - lost to me now. So what do I do? I pretend it never happened. I do exactly what Heidi accused me of. I shouldn’t have to choose between my family and what I want to accomplish but I’m that guy with the melted wings - what was his name? I keep flying too close to the sun.

If I could do it over, I’d put my trust in Heidi. Heidi was the only one who was enough of an outsider to see things clearly. Without Danko’s power lust or Bennet’s talent for maneuvering, she would have cut right through the bullshit. We could have figured it out together if I had been willing to let her help me navigate a reasonable course. One thing I know for sure; Heidi would never have bought into my father’s “army of specials” plan.

Not telling her the truth when all this started was my first mistake. My second mistake was convincing myself it was inevitable. It wasn’t powers or prophecies that ruined us, just one too many lies. Virtually homeless and untethered, I should have known I didn’t have any answers at all, nor did anyone in my family. Dad didn’t. Neither did Ma. Claire is too young and Peter too lost in the thick of it all. Bennet was closer to something that might have worked but he’s Anakin Skywalker without the adolescent angst and Darth Vader ego trip, so compromised by his zeal to protect Claire at all costs that he does the very things guaranteed to push her away.

I’m hardly one to talk with my track record. I’m stuck with another mission stamped with failure in big red letters and another madman who wants to save the world by tearing it apart. First Linderman, then Dad, now Danko. My father is dead, for real this time, but his influence lives on in my betrayal of everyone who cared about me and everyone with abilities, people like us.

When I close my eyes at night, all I see are the accusing faces of people I let down - Heidi refusing to look at me in that divorce mediator’s office, Claire’s face when she found out about Pinehearst and again when I formed the operation to round up specials. For their own good. Yeah like that was ever going to work. “How could you?!” Claire hissed at me. “Your own brother, of all people! I trusted you.” That was Claire’s first mistake.

I see Tracy in chains, shouting, “You’re one of us, Nathan! You’re one of us!” Yet she still protected me when Danko tried to get the goods on me. It wasn’t out of love or loyalty, that’s for sure. She just knew she was safer with me than with Danko. I was a lousy protector but at least I cared, although that might make me more of a monster.

The face of that poor bastard whose name I never knew, the guy Tracy iced when Danko let her loose, is permanently etched on my conscience. Tracy proved to Abby Collins that specials were real, and dangerous, exactly what Danko wanted. After that, funding for the operation ceased to be an issue. Bennet helping me nab Peter is another memory I wish I could forget. Bennet didn’t like it but man, he’s good; his mind is a locked vault and his face a combination you can’t read. That guy should take up poker. He goes through the motions like a machine as long as Claire is kept out of it. Turning Peter over to Danko was a helluva payback for saving Claire but Bennet’s still a better man than me. He knows his priorities. He lies like a mob lawyer defending a kingpin, but he has his reasons. I understand that.

In the great ledger of rights and wrongs, does it matter that I tried? I’m not out to hurt anyone. They've got to know that. Didn’t I stick my neck out to keep Ma’s ability a secret from Danko and to give Claire immunity from the operation? Haven’t I saved my brother’s ass enough for him to trust that I've been trying to protect him all along? No, how could he trust me? I betrayed him with a hug, like Judas Iscariot. I always said I wanted to be like Dad.

I thought I was doing the right thing. These powers have killed nearly everyone in my family several times over. How many times can we save the world without the world even knowing it was in danger? And what good is it when it’s us that the world needs saving from?

“You choose Dad,” Peter predicted in Haiti and I couldn’t imagine then that in a matter of hours I’d make my brother my adversary, something I’d never done in all the years I’d worked so hard for my father’s approval. Peter was wrong, though. It wasn’t Dad I was choosing. It had nothing to do with that. Seeing what that madman did in Haiti, I believed I was on the side of the angels, even if that meant dancing with the devil. Dad said it was too dangerous for all the power that specials wielded to be concentrated in the wrong hands and I agreed with him. Guys like Samedi and Sylar need to be stopped and we were going to level the playing field. Dad getting Sylar on his side was part of the plan to restore balance.

Peter managed to tilt the scales out of whack anyway.

“Why’d you you save me? Why’d you do it?” I asked him when he’d flown me miles away from the burning wreckage of Pinehearst, minutes after I nearly broke his legs with that pipe. That’s the kind of shit he always does and man, I could almost believe guilt trips were his real superpower.

“Because you’re my brother and I love you.” Of course he’d say that. What did I expect? Maybe I was hoping he’d say he didn’t know, that I was a prick who didn’t deserve it. “Force of habit, Nathan. Now fuck off because I won’t be so dumb again.” That’s what he should have answered. Then I could justify what I said next.

“That’s not what I would have done.”

I flew off, leaving him with a gaping hole in his heart and me with my spiteful pride intact. I can never un-say it. It’s the kind of thing you can’t even apologize for.

Was it true? Would I really have left my brother to burn there? Was I so convinced of the purity of my mission that it was worth my brother’s life? Was it worth my soul, to forever walk the earth with the mark of Cain on my forehead? No, no, no. Please, God, no. That’s not who I am. I’m my parents’ son. I know that. I’m also Peter’s brother and Claire’s father. Surely there’s something of them in me too.

After Pinehearst, Peter still hadn’t learned his lesson but he caught on soon enough. I betrayed him with a hug and he repaid me twice, once after Tracy used him as a pawn only to learn he was using her, and again when Danko shot him off a building and I caught him. He was more like a Petrelli every day, and he hugged me then just long enough to absorb my flying ability and shoot off into the night sky. Dad would have been proud of him, finally, and this time I was the one abandoned.

“You understand, Nathan, why I took your brother’s powers?” my father had asked after I’d teamed up with him.  

“Of course, Dad. It’s for his own good.” That’s me, public servant number one, saving us all from ourselves.

“That’s right,” Dad nodded. “Your brother has his heart in the right place but this is a job for people who understand power, people like you and me.”

Only it didn’t work. It never could have but I couldn’t see that yet and when Dad’s plan fell apart, I crawled out of his bed and into Danko’s.  


***

_Summer 1997_

 

“Pack a bag, Pete. We’re going sailing. We’ll drive up to the cape tomorrow morning.” I held the phone to my ear while I shuffled through the papers on my desk.

“I can’t. I’m scheduled to work this weekend.”

“No you’re not.” I told him I had called his boss and gotten him the time off.

“Why’d you do that?” The irritation in his voice sent a twinge of disappointment through me. When did my brother stop wanting to be with me all the time? He could be a pest, dogging my heels when I had places to be and people to see and now he was growing up and away from me.

“Because in another month,” I patiently answered, “you’ll be in college and trying to make our schedules mesh will be impossible. Work is crazy but right now, I’m between cases. Let’s push the pause button for one weekend. I wanna spend some time with you.”

“What did you tell my boss?” Now he sounded resigned. Good, because he was going sailing with me, like it or not. He’d have fun, too. I’d make sure of it if I had to pay a hooker to get him laid for the first time. Not that I would really do that, although it would be a hoot. Who knew, maybe he’d already lost his virginity. I decided then and there I’d pry that out of him over the weekend.

“Family business. He said he’d switch you with one of your co-workers. You can make up the hours next week.”

The drive to Cape Cod was uneventful and we arrived in the late afternoon. We spent the next full day on the water, docking the boat just before sunset and going out for lobster and beer. Peter was too young to drink and I didn’t let him have more than one. He wasn’t drunk, just goofy from too much sun and exhaustion because I’d dragged him out of bed at an ungodly hour for civilians. He was punchy all through dinner, laughing way too hard at my lame jokes and even his sunburn couldn’t hide the blush when I finally asked him point blank if he’d been laid yet. (I should have known he had. He steadfastly refused to spill the details.)

As we were leaving the restaurant, I slung an arm across his narrow shoulders. An older woman at a table near us glared at me and I heard her hissing furiously to her dinner companion. “It’s disgusting. He’s got that poor boy drunk! I wonder where that boy’s mother is?” Peter was a late bloomer and looked more like fifteen though he was nearly eighteen. A moment later, a skinny arm snaked around my waist and a hand rested on my ass. When I felt Peter goose me, I looked down at him - he still had a few inches to grow - and he met my eyes with an expression of pure, entirely exaggerated, adoration.Then he cracked up and I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh too at that busybody and her knee jerk assumption. She couldn’t see the family resemblance? 

When we got back to the city, I dropped off the rental car and went back to my parents’ house with Peter. It was Sunday and Ma wanted us to have a family dinner.

“How did you boys enjoy your sailing trip?” Ma asked when we sat down for our traditional spaghetti and meatballs. “We certainly had lovely weather here.”

“It was great,” Peter said, “We had a pretty good breeze. Oh and some lady in a restaurant thought Nathan was my sugar daddy.” He glanced over at me, widened his eyes and grinned. Dad’s eyebrows went up but he didn’t say anything. Ma pulled a stern face but her mouth was twitching like she wanted to laugh but knew she shouldn’t.

“I suppose that means you two were getting along and I should be grateful but I’m not going to have that kind of talk at the dinner table. Nathan, will you pass the bread?” she said.

After dinner, Peter got a phone call from some girl, giving me a quick, distracted hug before disappearing with the phone. Dad walked me to the door.

“Tell me something, son,” he said, putting his hand on the back of my neck the way he always did when he wanted to have a father-son chat. “You’re a busy, successful thirty-year-old attorney with a beautiful young woman chasing after you. I’m glad you and your brother are close, but what can you possibly talk about all weekend with a teenager? He’s nothing like you. I can’t see what the two of you have in common.”

I shrugged. I wondered if Dad ever asked Peter why he put up with his asshole big brother. I suppose I could treat Peter better but I do the best I can.

“I don’t know, Dad. What do you have in common with Uncle Tim? He’s my brother. I love him. It’s as simple as that.”

***


	5. Chapter 5

_Summer 2007_

 

Danko had been on the warpath since the transport plane full of specials went down. After he wired up Parkman like a suicide bomber on Capitol Hill, I thought I had the jump on him but my victory was short-lived. I fired him, special orders from the president, and he pulled a gun, shot a window behind me and shoved me out. He’d just said that I never seemed afraid and there I was, panicking. One he saw me fly, it was the end of my credibility. My first thought was that Claire would lose her immunity; I had to get to her before agents did.

Flying with Claire was a breeze compared with some of my other passengers. She’s a helluva lot lighter than Matt Parkman and she didn’t scream or dig her fingers into me when I darted around to avoid obstacles. I could fly faster with her, too, since she’s impervious to the friction.

We touched down in Mexico with nothing but the clothes on our backs. It’s almost too bad Dad never got to know his granddaughter. I think he would have admired her. Last night, I tried to show off to Claire and instead, she showed me up. I told her I could drink a bunch of frat boys under the table and win their money. I did it all the time when I was on shore leave and I was good at it. After I passed out, Claire won all the cash those frat boys had. Turns out she can’t get drunk. I kinda wish I’d known that before I downed all that tequila.

I promised her last night that I would fix everything, but that was just liquid courage talking. The truth is I have no friends left on the hill. Who’s gonna talk to me now? Claire’s not letting me off the hook so easily and if I didn’t already hate myself, her little speech finished me off.

“You can do anything you want,” she insisted, and there was that innocent optimism again. I don't know how she’s held onto it this long. “You can fly! You're supposed to be Superman.”  

Even the tears staining her pretty face couldn’t wash away her faith. My beautiful, brave daughter. She deserves better. I’m not Superman. Nothing’s changed. I’m still the same guy I always was. Not so long ago, Peter said, “You’re Nathan Petrelli. Most likely to…” Yeah, most likely to shit on the people who love me, a chip off the old block with a side-helping of Ma.

***

My shovel hit packed earth about a thousand times last night and the whole time, I could feel my back muscles knotting up. I flew hundreds of miles with Claire in my arms and I hadn’t quite recovered from my tequila hangover when Ma put a shovel in my hands. She didn’t say when she summoned us here to Coyote Sands that digging in the dirt in the middle of the night was on the agenda. She didn’t explain why, either. “Dig!” was all she said when I tried to ask. My brother ignored me, shooting dark angry glances my way when he’d look at me at all. He can be a sanctimonious bastard but I deserve it. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I’ve got nothing but smooth streets and green lights all the way down.

I’m not wrong about the dangers of these abilities. The powers that Peter once found so magical have brought nothing but death and destruction. My family are hardly the only casualties. Abilities have wrecked the lives of everyone who has them not to mention the people destroyed simply because they were in the path of the fallout. Everything I’ve tried has failed, so I guess it’s time to see what others can do. That’s why I’m here. Digging my way back into my family’s good graces, I hope, except we’re all standing on our separate little islands of dirt in this barren, dusty place and it feels more like we’re digging our way to hell. Maybe there’s still time for things to be different. We were a family, once, for all of our dysfunction. We loved each other. That was real, wasn’t it? I have to believe that, and that’s what I’m holding onto, like a kid with a pocketful of lucky marbles. If everything was a lie, then I don’t know what point there is in going on. 

***

Ma’s story is coming out in bits and pieces as we unearth the skeletons that are buried here. The irony of hidden skeletons isn’t lost on me.

“This is where it all began,” she said. “I was innocent once, like you.” She was looking at Peter and Claire when she said that. Clearly I’m no innocent.

Bennet is here now and Mohinder Suresh has arrived, too. Ma said that she discovered her abilities as a young girl and this place was a containment camp where Suresh’s father was studying abilities and trying to replicate them. Of course the government was involved. Either the elder Suresh gets the award for best liar of us all for writing a book that made people like us seem like a fascinating new discovery, or somebody got to him and made him forget. Suresh is struggling to reconcile his father’s past with the man he knew, something I know only too well. Like me, Mohinder’s hands aren’t clean either. Injecting himself with the formula was unethical at best and what he did after...well, I’m not the only one who was corrupted by power.  

Ma says she lost her family here, botching things with schemes and well-meaning lies. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Maybe she’s having her own long-overdue epiphany that personal ambition won’t save the world.

Go ahead and be queen - or Senator - but don’t kid yourself that your motives are pure. Leave the heroics to people who put their own asses on the line because in the end it’s only when we risk it all that we can save anything. God knows, I’ve screwed up enough to have learned a few lessons from failure. Right things for the wrong reasons and wrong things for the right reasons only add up to wrong. It’s easy to say that now, though; I know from painful experience how quickly black and white can turn to grey. I can understand Ma’s feelings, too, about losing her family, having learned the hard way myself. But if it’s taken her all this time to recognize her errors then maybe it wasn’t a high enough price.

I've tried to persuade my brother to talk to me and Claire’s leaned on him, too. He’s not ready to forgive me and even if he does, I don’t know if he’ll ever trust me again. I earned that. Still hurts, though. I’m hoping some of Claire’s idealism will rub off on him because it’s hard to see him so cynical and bitter. Ma once said Peter was the most powerful of us all and she meant the abilities of course, most of which he no longer has. Personally, I think he’s better off without all those powers though I doubt he’d agree. He likes being different; me, all I ever wanted was to conform. It was never about the abilities anyway. I look at people like Linderman, like my parents. Or me, for that matter. I look at how anybody uses the talents they have. It’s never about the abilities, never about what you _can_ do but what you _will_. That’s what makes someone a hero.

***

Look at us, a ragtag group of disillusioned people hiding out in the desert waiting for skeletons to reveal their secrets. What if instead of lies and plots hatched behind closed doors, our parents had told us about the abilities, and helped us understand them? Heidi didn't have to endure the accident and paralysis. Linderman healing her didn’t erase the pain and fear she suffered. It didn’t heal the damage to our marriage. If I'd known I could fly, if Peter had known he was a power sponge, if Suresh and Parkman had known about their fathers’’ legacies...ah, but it doesn't change the fact that our parents were scheming manipulators. How far back in time would Hiro have to take us to fix that? Was it that the abilities changed our parents or was that already in their DNA?

I can’t speak for their childhoods, but mine was happy. Ma seemed like a typical mother when I was growing up, if you could call a wealthy socialite typical. I don't know how she and Dad managed to hide the abilities for so long, or whether they went dormant all those years until Peter’s powers and mine emerged. I’ll have to ask her one of these days. I’m pretty sure she loved us. She was demanding in her own way with her impeccable manners, insistence on decorum and ambition for her sons to make their mark on society. Still, a lesser woman would not have been able to blunt my father’s worst impulses. I guess Dad loved us too, and it wasn’t easy being his son, but there were good times. I felt safe and if my parents’ love wasn’t as unconditional as it should have been, well, that’s what brothers are for.

When Dad wasn’t devising obstacle courses for me, I liked to listen to him. I could have done without the endless, boring games of chess that I almost never won. (I have a chess set in my office although to this day I detest the game...if that ain’t daddy issues, I don't know what is.) But there were all those early mornings when it was just Dad and me, watching the sunrise crawl across the Manhattan skyline until all of the city’s windows reflected its fire. That’s when we had our best talks.

This is corny as hell, but as a kid I had the idea that Dad engineered those sunrises just for me, for us. I don't mean that I literally believed he commanded the heavens. Even at his most powerful, he couldn’t do that.  It was our time together, that’s all, just the two of us. We would stand by the French doors that opened onto the balcony and there was something mythical about the way the light fell over the still dreamy city while Dad told stories and narrated his philosophies. I felt important and privileged to be his audience. It’s not true that the city never sleeps. Even New York takes a little snooze and Dad and I were the ones who conjured it back to life on those early mornings.

Dad loved war stories. He’d quote his favorite books and try to make me understand his views. Most of it was over my head and it wasn’t until I was in high school that I could even begin to grasp what he was trying to say. I get it now. I even agree with some of it. But a lot of it was just Dad rationalizing the lust for power.

The irony of Dad favoring the son he formed in his image is rich. He wanted sons who knew how to get ahead in this world, how to maneuver and manipulate. Like me. Except I never really stepped out of his shadow. Stark revelation, huh? News at eleven. Imagine his chagrin when it turned out that the wrong son was the one with all the powers. He had to inject me with the formula when I was a baby to make sure I’d develop an ability and Peter was the one who inherited the birthright. Had Dad known all those years ago which abilities we would develop and just how powerful Peter would become? It would explain a lot. I could almost forgive him if he knew what those powers could do and was trying to prepare us, but that’s just trying to retcon my father into the man I thought he was and wish he had been.

Sure, Peter’s powers were no match for Dad’s, not when Dad could just suck them away like some monstrous power vacuum and leave Peter nullified. But Dad’s dead, and if Peter were the type, he’d be having the last laugh. He’s not, so I’ll have that laugh for him. Is it wrong to be so cavalier about my brother killing our father? I can’t help thinking that Dad had it coming to him. Our family is a goddamn Greek tragedy. 

***

Ma’s been telling stories about her childhood since we got here. She never talked about her sister before; Peter and I had no idea our aunt Alice ever existed. It’s funny how history repeats itself, how Ma and I had the same role of looking out for our younger siblings. Maybe if I had known this story long ago, it would have served as a cautionary tale. Would I have learned from Ma’s mistakes, or did I have to make the same ones all over again?

When we first arrived here in Coyote Sands, Ma said that she had been innocent then, but that’s not true, at least not from the story she told. She was already scheming, even if it was well-intentioned. I always wondered how Peter ended up so different from the rest of us and then Claire came along and there was no mistaking her lineage. She has Meredith’s looks, the Petrelli gene for conniving and now I see that the impulsivity and naïveté that skipped over Ma came from my aunt. Maybe Alice is the reason Ma doted on Peter. I always thought it was because he was the baby of the family and I suppose it was that too but now it seems like it could have been Ma’s way of honoring her lost sister. Who knows if Ma would have succeeded, if abilities hadn’t changed everything. I’m hardly in a position to judge her.

Ma said that her sister always wanted to be in on everything, just like my daughter and my brother. No matter how many times Bennet and I tried to keep Claire out of danger, she inserted herself into the action. Even as a baby, Peter was the same. He had to be in the middle of whatever everyone else was doing, and would fight sleep like a ninja battling a mortal enemy. Eventually, he’d collapse. I don't know when he outgrew that tendency to conk out like a narcoleptic whenever he got into a moving vehicle. Hell, I think he still naps. I can’t imagine anyone more suited to the erratic life of a New York City paramedic.

Dad used to think there was something wrong with him because he wouldn’t conform to a schedule. One time, he said to Ma, “Angela, there's something not right about him. We ought to have Linderman take a look.”

“Dad, you’re holding him wrong,” I said, unable to imagine why Dad’s client would want to look at my baby brother. “He doesn’t like being against your shoulder. He wants to see what’s going on.” Once he could hold his head up, I always held Peter facing out. Dad told me to mind my own business. It drove Dad nuts and even Ma said I was spoiling him when I laid down with him until he finally would crash. It was either that or stay up all night listening to his crying. Weeks of trying to make him sleep by himself failed. They’d tried everything, including putting him to sleep in Millie’s room with strict orders not to pick him up. Millie marched into the kitchen one morning and told my parents that if they forced her to make that poor baby cry all night one more time, she would quit. Peter got his way and everyone slept better.

Some things never change, I guess. He still won’t be left out of the action. I swear my brother has more lives than a cat sanctuary, even without the healing power, but one of these days I’m afraid his luck will run out.  


_Summer 1986_

 

“Nathan, pick me up,” Peter wheedled.

“Nathan, do not pick that boy up,” my father said. “He’s not a baby. Stop coddling him.” Dad’s favorite word, or I should say least favorite.

My mother rolled her eyes behind Dad’s back. Did every family vacation have to be like this? It was the summer I turned nineteen and we were in Disney World. It was the worst time of year to go to Florida but Annapolis kept me on a tight schedule and we had to go when I was free. The suffocating humidity sapped everyone’s strength, making us all grouchy. Peter was six and a half and his bandy little legs were worn out from all the walking.

Later, when the parade went down Main Street, Peter couldn’t see past the people in front of us. What was the point of being at the parade if the one person who really cared about it couldn’t see. “C’mon, Pete,” I said, grabbing him under his arms. I swung him up and over my head, settling him atop my shoulders with his legs dangling down around my neck while I ignored the stony glare Dad aimed at me.

“Nathan, you’re awesome!” Peter must have said it fifty times as the parade passed and as we strolled around the park before heading back to our hotel.

The heat the next day was ferocious, even by Florida standards. Peter was flagging by early afternoon. I wasn’t going to push my luck by letting him ride on my shoulders again. Dad would only take so much crap from me and I think even Peter knew enough to keep any complaints to himself. It surprised me, then, when Dad was the one to lift Peter up onto his shoulders,

“Alright, Peter, you can sit up there for awhile until you get your strength back.”

Peter turned around and his eyes sought mine. All I could do was try to look encouraging. Ma was frayed around the edges and wilting like an unwatered orchid in the humidity. She didn’t say anything, merely exchanged glances with me. Hell had just frozen over, Florida heat be damned. With Peter settled into his perch on Dad’s shoulders, my father flicked his eyes at me.

“Dad, I want to get down.” Peter said, though he'd only been on Dad’s shoulders for about ten minutes.

“Are you sure, son?” Dad asked. His large hands rested just above Peter’s scabby knees. “You were looking pretty tired there.”  

Peter had that determined expression he gets when he's made up his mind, all dark furrowed brows and bottom lip pushed out.

“I can walk. I'm not a baby.”

Dad set him on his feet without comment. Later I tried to explain to Peter that he needed to be nicer to Dad if he wanted Dad to take it easy on him.

“I _was_ being nice,” he insisted. “He said I’m too big to get picked up.”  


***

_Spring 1994_

 

When I finished my tour of duty, I thought I was finally my father’s equal. I’d seen battle, and death, up close. I didn’t glory in it the way my father did. There was nothing glamorous about it. But if war doesn’t kill you or destroy your sanity, it sure as hell makes you grow up.   

I arrived home in the midst of a different kind of battle. I barely got a welcome because my father and brother were in Dad’s office with the door shut, shouting at one another. My mother was sitting at the dining room table with a glass of red wine in front of her and her fingers gripping the edge of the table.

“Ma? What’s going on?” I kissed her on the cheek and it didn’t escape me that she didn’t get up to hug me or exclaim over my arrival.

“Oh Nathan, thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “I hope you can talk some sense into them.”

I had hardly ever heard my Dad raise his voice and right now, he was roaring. Peter matched him decibel for decibel. Then the office door opened and fifteen-year-old Peter stormed out. I hadn’t seen him in two years; he was taller and lankier than I remembered, with broader shoulders and a more angular face that had yet to sprout any significant hair. He stopped when he saw me.

“Nathan! Hey, I didn't know you’d be back today.” He gave me a forced smile and a quick pat on the arm. “I really wanna catch up but I have to get out of here. I’ll see you a little later.” A lingering hand brushed my shoulder and then was gone as he moved past me on his way to the front door.

“Sure, Pete,” I said, not that he was waiting for my answer. I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me.

Ma rose from the table and followed Peter. “Peter, wait.” He turned back towards her approach and I watched her lay a hand on his cheek and speak to him in a voice too low for me to decipher her words. My brother’s angry expression smoothed out as he squeezed Ma’s hand and told her he was fine. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt like a stranger in my own house, as if I’d walked in to find a new family living there.

With Peter gone, Ma returned her attention to me and greeted me more warmly than on first sight. She held me for a long time then stepped back and inspected me with a critical eye, pronounced me “too thin” and promised that I’d fill right out with some home-cooked meals.

Later, Dad stopped by my room to welcome me home. He didn’t bring up whatever had happened in his office and neither did I. Instead, he suggested we go out for a celebratory welcome home dinner. It was just the three of us and although Peter’s absence was conspicuous, we all pretended not to notice.

It had been a long day by the time we returned home. I said goodnight to my parents and headed for bed even though it was Saturday night. There was plenty of time to hit the town; for now, I was looking forward to sleeping in a real bed with a comforter that wasn’t made of scratchy wool.

 Sometime later, I felt the mattress move to accommodate the weight of a person sitting on the bed.

“I’m sorry, Nathan,” he said.

“Pete,” I answered groggily. “It’s fine. You okay?” The red glow of the digital clock on the nightstand wasn’t bright enough to let me see my brother’s face but I could make out his outline. It would take getting used to this larger version of him.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I missed you. A lot. I’m glad you’re home.”  
  
“Me, too, kiddo. Your letters were a big part of what kept me going. You’re not too old for a hug, are ya?” I asked, already shifting to a sitting position. After a squishy embrace, I said, “It didn’t feel a hundred percent like home before. Now it does.”

“Same here,” he said. “I should let you sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”  

In the weeks that followed, I had reasons to regret living under my parents’ roof again. Everything had changed. Dad was angry much of the time and Ma was on edge whenever he and Peter were in the same room. It used to take a lot to bring out my brother’s temper. Now he and Dad prowled around each other in a classic display of male dominance, sniping and snarling and occasionally escalating to all-out verbal warfare. Dad railed at Peter’s mediocre grades, his messy hair, punk-rock t-shirts and ripped jeans and, especially, his attitude. Peter went right back at Dad about his sleazy clients and drill-sergeant approach to parenting. I don’t think they even knew what they were arguing over since they’d long since passed the point of listening or even trying to be understood. Now they were just scoring points. There was no talking to them in the midst of their testosterone-fueled battles. I tried. Ma tried. They couldn’t even hear us.

I remembered my own hormone-induced rages at Peter’s age; the difference was that I hadn’t been crazy enough to take it out on Dad. I spent my aggression on sports, which was another of Dad’s complaints about my brother: he hadn’t gone out for any high school teams, didn’t join the debate club, didn’t do any of the things I’d done. I hardly recognized my father in this perpetually angry man who was so easily triggered by a snotty teenager but then I recalled the way he’d been in the early months of Peter’s babyhood. He was so perplexed by his younger son’s failure to fall under his domineering spell that he had thought there must be something medically wrong with him. Nope, Peter was as healthy as could be. His primary defect - if you could call it that - was that he was himself. Nothing Dad had done so far could discipline him out of it. Unfortunately for all of us, Dad wasn’t ready to give up on him.

I looked for a job to keep me out of the house as much as possible until my classes started. I had been planning to attend law school as a commuter - I’d had enough of communal life - but I was re-thinking that plan and considered renting an apartment near campus to escape the melodrama that had become my family. 

I found a summer job in a small criminal defense firm where I would write-up case summaries when I wasn’t running papers back and forth to the courthouse and getting coffee for the lawyers. It would be my first step toward my ultimate goal of working for the D.A. and, eventually, pursuing a career in politics, just as my father and I had always talked about. Not long after starting my new job, I found an apartment downtown. I felt a little guilty leaving my brother to deal with Dad on his own, but honestly, there wasn’t much I could do anyway.

I’d been out of the house for about six weeks when all hell broke loose. Ma had asked me over for Sunday dinner. I went as often as I could, when I wasn't busy with work or trying to have a social life. I arrived that afternoon to the all-too familiar sound of shouting from behind Dad’s office door.

“They’ve been at each other all day,” Ma informed me with an exasperated sigh before presenting her cheek for me to kiss. “I’ve tried to talk to your father about the regimen…Peter is too old and too rebellious to tolerate it any longer. Your brother is far too insecure to accept your father’s brand of discipline. I’m afraid neither of them will get what they want from the other and your father stubbornly refuses to consider there are other ways of cultivating a young man’s development.”

Ma’s words barely had time to register when my brother’s angry voice abruptly cut out, followed by crashing and banging sounds and my father’s loud bellow. “You will cease your ridiculous rebellion if I have to beat it out of you!” Something slammed against the wall and then, more frightening than any of the sounds previously emerging from the room, was the utter silence on the tail end of my father’s tirade. Ma and I exchanged worried glances. 

“I’m going in there!” I said, making my way to the door in quick strides.

“Nathan, be careful.” Ma called after me but she didn’t get in my way, try to talk me out of it or follow me.

I banged on the door before entering. “Dad,” I said, “I’m coming in.” There was no answer so I turned the knob and pushed the door. It wouldn’t budge. I rattled it, thinking it was locked although there was no resistance when I turned the knob. I pushed against the door with my shoulder and felt it give a little but something - or someone - was pushing back. “Come on. Let me in. I just want to talk.” Still no answer. I pushed again, hard, and the door gave way, causing me to stumble inside. The first thing that caught my eye was the absolute mess in Dad’s pristine office. Papers were strewn everywhere, books were lying all over the floor, a heavy paperweight that normally sat on Dad’s desk had landed on the opposite side of the room and the wall above it was gouged. Apparently someone, most likely Dad, had thrown it. It was nuts. Dad was standing near his desk, one hand resting on its surface. His face was livid with anger. My brother was across the room, sitting on the floor with his legs akimbo, back against the wall, and messy hair falling around his downcast face.

“What’s going on?” I asked, stupidly. It was patently obvious what had been going on.

“Don’t get in the middle of this, son. This is not your problem.” Dad said. His eyes turned toward me but otherwise, his body was rigid.

“I think it is my problem when the two men I love best are at each other’s throats.” I approached him and touched his arm, tentatively, because he looked as if he wanted to throttle me.

“Don’t mistake that mewling child for a man,” he said, inclining his head toward Peter. “I have to wonder if he will ever have what it takes.”

“He’s right, Nate,” Peter said from across the room and for a moment I thought he was agreeing with Dad’s grotesque insult. “This is between me and Dad.” He lifted his head up and leaned it against the wall.

“I’m glad you two agree on something,” I started to say but the words stalled when I saw the bruises on my brother’s face and the unmistakable imprint of fingers on his throat. He moved his head slightly and left a smear of blood on the wall.

“Jeez, Pete, you’re bleeding….” I rushed over to him and crouched in front of his sprawled form. “Let me see.” Peter batted my hands away. “I’m fine. You should go,” he said in his newly deepened voice. I turned back to my father, shocked and bewildered. I was angry, too, but I struggled to contain it in the face of the powder keg that was already smoldering, needing just one more spark to ignite.

“What happened, Dad?” I said, looking over to where he remained standing beside his desk. “You’ve never laid a hand on me. Why would you….”

“You want to come at me, Nathan?” Dad interrupted and he was like the Dad I’d always known, calm, stern, unyielding. Not the raging maniac who’d just beaten his own son to a pulp, yet still a stranger because he’d never threatened me before.

“Come on, I’ll take you on, too. I’ll take the two of you. Think you’re man enough for it? Your brother thought he could stand up to me, too.”

For more than a few seconds as I got my legs under me and rose to stand, I thought about throwing a punch. I wanted to pound him for beating down a hundred and twenty-pound fifteen-year-old and for all the times he’d beaten me down, too, with words instead of blows. I think it was Nietzsche, Dad’s favorite philosopher, who said that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and that quote summed up Dad’s parenting approach. Our gratitude when he built us back up was supposed to  instill loyalty. It might not have worked so well on me if Peter and I had been closer in age, but Dad had a twelve-year head start. I didn't punch him. It was a conscious effort to stretch out my hands that wanted to ball themselves into fists. It would only make things worse. I didn’t want to hit my father. I loved him, respected and admired him. Except I did want to hit him, too, my instinct to protect my brother flaring up because didn’t I always? If not me, then who? 

“Dad! No, I didn't come in here to fight with you. I - “ I faltered because, honestly, I didn't know what to do. I could usually talk my way out of any situation but this wasn’t one of them.

Dad spared me any further embarrassment. “Take your brother and go. Get him cleaned up and have a look at that bruise on his head. Tell your mother I won’t be joining you for dinner.”

Ma fussed over Peter and his quivering chin when she placed her hands on either side of his face reminded me that he was just a kid, a scared, confused kid who was trying his best to be a man and hold back tears. I wouldn't have blamed him if he’d cried. Dad was scary and never more so than that day.

After dinner, Dad’s client, Linderman, dropped by. He and Ma talked quietly in the kitchen before he went in to see Dad. I had to work the next morning but I decided to stay over to keep an eye on things. I had stashed an extra couple of suits at my parents’ for occasions like this. Well, not like this because I’d never expected my father to fly into a rage and throw my brother around. Dad came in while I was brushing my teeth and apologized. It was a first that I could recall in my twenty-seven years on the planet. Even more amazing, he apologized to Peter. I found that out later, when I went to check on my brother before turning in. Peter hadn’t wanted to talk about the argument earlier, but now, under cover of darkness, he opened up. 

“Did you accept his apology?” I asked, sitting on his bed in the unlit room. I knew the answer but what I wanted to know was whether he’d ever forgive our father.

“'Course I did.” That was pure Peter. Sometimes he’d stew for awhile but he always came around. He’d never been one to hold a grudge for very long.

“Do you think he meant it?”

“I do. You know what? I think that Linderman guy convinced him. I think Ma called him. That guy has a way of showing up when stuff goes wrong. Dad trusts him.”

“Huh,” was all I said. I didn't know what to make of it so I put it out of my mind although I’ve since had many occasions to wonder about Linderman and his relationship with my parents.

“Pete, what the hell happened in there? I’ve never seen Dad so angry. Has he hit you before? He’s never touched me.” I think I was still in shock.

“No kidding. You’re the son he wishes he had two of. Yeah, he’s manhandled me a bit. Never like that.” We sat quietly for awhile. I didn’t know what to say. I’d always been Dad’s favorite. It was just the way things were and I couldn’t placate Peter anymore. He knew, probably had known for a long time. If it was any consolation, he was Ma’s favorite.

I wanted to crawl under the covers and lie down next to my little brother the way I’d done when he was a kid, but he was fifteen. He’d probably get offended if I treated him like a baby. I swung my legs up on the bed anyway and scooted back to lean against the headboard. I was sitting up, and not under the blankets with him, so I told myself it wasn’t weird. I’d misjudged him because no sooner had I positioned myself beside him than he was snuggling closer, leaning his head against my arm. I slid my arm out from under him and rested it over his shoulders. It felt like old times, when I’d chase away the monsters that hid under the bed.

“I was pretty scared in there with Dad. He’s really fucking strong.” Peter whispered, “It was kinda crazy.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “He’s a tough old bastard.”

“He was like a maniac. Shit was flying all over the room and I barely saw him move. A couple of books hit me in the face.” That sounded a bit exaggerated; leave it to Peter to turn the dial up to fantastical.

“Did you go after him? Is that why he got so mad?”

“No! I’d never do that.” Peter raised his head and turned to face me in the darkness, even though we couldn’t see each other’s expressions. “I mean, he pisses me off but he’s still my father. I wouldn’t hit him. Anyway, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. I was just back-talking and the next thing I knew, he grabbed me by the neck and threw me across the room with one hand. I went flying. I don’t think he even broke a sweat.”

He settled back down with his head against my collarbone. “Listen, Pete. I don’t know what’s going on with Dad. I’m gonna talk to Ma on the QT and suggest Dad get a check-up. Maybe he’s starting to lose his marbles. I hope not; he’s not that old. But you gotta quit provoking him. I can’t be here all the time to get in the middle of you two and I don’t want a repeat of today. Just knuckle under, hmm?” I jostled his shoulder. “Can you do that? For me?”

I heard him sigh. “It’s not easy, Nathan. He’s up my ass whenever he’s home, which, thank God, isn’t much.”

“So get your shit together. Hit the books and get your grades up. Get a haircut. The school lets you get away with that mop? Put on a sweater or a button-down shirt once in awhile. Ma buys you all those nice clothes….try wearing them. Get some jeans that don’t have holes in them. Try to look the part, y’know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” he said and this time he jostled me. “I get it. You’re turning into an old fogey. ‘Get a haircut. Hit the books. Blah, blah, blah.’” 

I had to laugh. He was incorrigible. Still, he wasn’t a baby anymore and maybe Dad had a point. It was time for Peter to start growing up.

I went back to my room a short while later, but I couldn’t sleep. The afternoon’s events ran through my head like a bad movie playing on every channel. It was ridiculous. My parents weren’t the first to contend with a hormone-ridden teenager and Peter wasn’t a bad kid, just a little unruly. He could work on taming his mouth but what kid didn’t backtalk?

Dad’s taunts about taking me on rubbed a raw space inside that I didn’t like to acknowledge. I was afraid of my father. I’d always been afraid of him. He’d never touched me in anger and yet he terrified me for reasons I couldn’t name. The things Peter had said about how strong he was, how violent he’d been - I think I always knew my father had that in him. All his war stories, maybe it was a form of PTSD and Peter’s challenging him spiked it out of control. There had to be some explanation for him to lose it like that. Shame was also lurking not too far from the surface, though I like to think I hid it well. Everything I was, was because of my father. He made me and I thought that meant I was tough. I took everything he dished out, learned  to steamroller over every obstacle. I flew planes and faced war zones, serving eagerly because that’s what my father had done and I wanted to do everything he did. I was going to do it better, too.

Yeah, I was so tough. So why did I back down? Why didn’t I let my father know exactly what I thought of what he had done? I was tired of feeling guilty about his favoritism. Peter was the one person who loved me beyond all reason, without all the messy strings that my parents loved to yank on. He loved me simply because I existed. I had a feeling that if the circumstances had been reversed, Peter would have stood up for me, however futile it might have been. He didn’t calculate the odds the way I did.

A surge of the old, childish resentment emerged. It had been pointless to hold onto it once Peter was born. It wasn’t his fault that it had taken so long for my parents to have a second kid. Anyway, he’d won me over pretty fast. Turns out all I ever needed was someone to salve my precious ego and that was Peter, adoring me from the start. I loved him right back. How could I not, when he was like a magic mirror that made me look better than I was. No, that’s not fair to either of us; it was more than that. He was a great kid, and if my parents couldn’t see that, I could. I did. And yet I couldn’t help faulting him for putting me in that situation with Dad. For once, the magic mirror had lost its luster and the guy I saw in my father’s study wasn’t someone I was proud to be. Peter hadn’t asked me to intervene. We’d had a good talk and he was satisfied to have me there, listening and consoling him. At the moment, though, I couldn't see past my own self-loathing and Peter was an easy target for the blame I needed to lay elsewhere. Anywhere but on my own drooping shoulders.

I finally fell asleep and in the morning, I dragged myself to work. For the next month, I claimed work as an excuse for ignoring my family - all of them. I let their calls go to the answering machine in my apartment, and asked the secretary in the office to take messages instead of putting the calls through. The next time I saw my family, everyone complained about my absence but they accepted my excuses. I was a busy guy. My mother confided that Dad was taking antidepressants. He’d been on on them before but had quit because he didn’t like the side-effects. According to my mother, the new class of medications worked better and didn’t cause the drowsiness and headaches that had led Dad to stop taking them in the past.

“So how is he?” I asked. “Do you think the depression is why he and Peter were butting heads so much?” I sat at the kitchen island and watched her tossing a salad. A pot of Italian gravy simmered on the stovetop. Millie had the day off and my mother liked to cook when she had the time. She looked more relaxed than the last few times I’d seen her, her hair all done up and makeup perfect even for a Sunday at home.

“Yes, absolutely.” She speared a piece of lettuce with a fork and tasted it, then drizzled more of her homemade dressing over the salad. “Don’t misunderstand. Your father and your brother are never going to see eye to eye. They’re too different and yet cut from the same cloth….stubborn and strong-willed. The pills aren’t going to magically make your father accept Peter for who he is. And since only your father is taking medication, it won’t do much for Peter’s smart mouth. That said, your father seems more comfortable in his skin than he has been for some time.”

I nodded and reached for an olive from the salad bowl. Ma slapped my hand away with a reminder that I wasn’t in the barracks anymore. “Mind your manners, young man. And by the way, your father and I have agreed not to tell Peter about the depression. I don’t want your brother to worry. Let’s keep this conversation between us.”

“Sure, Ma. I won’t breathe a word of it.”

Law school started shortly after that and I was too busy for family drama. From what Ma said, Dad’s medicine was working. There were no repeats of the incident in Dad’s office. She was right, too, that it didn’t stop my father and brother from getting on each other’s nerves but it was the stuff of everyday families. Ma said that she had a good mind to put Peter on medicine, too, and she wasn't entirely joking. “I don’t know what gets into that boy sometimes, Nathan. Half the time I think he lives in a fantasy world with those comic books and video games.”

“He’s fine, Ma,” I assured her. “Quit worrying about him. Everything’s back to normal.”  
  


***


	6. Chapter 6

_Summer 2007_

 

Peter took off in a snit today and I went after him. So much for not holding grudges: he threw that old playoff game I made him miss in my face and reminded me for only the millionth time that I’m selfish. Of all the things I’ve done, it’s laughable that he’d bring up a baseball game from years ago. I let him explode at Kirby Square, stranded him in Haiti in a rush to do my father’s bidding, nearly broke his legs at Pinehearst. What kind of a prick treats his brother that way? What kind of manipulative asshole hugs his brother only to capture him and turn him over to an animal like Danko? Me, that’s who. And he’s talking about baseball.

Sure, I took care of him. I protected him from Dad when he was a kid but rarely if ever by putting my own ass on the line. I strategized, I hid things from our father but when my brother needed me to stand up to Dad, I didn't have the balls. I took Dad’s side at Pinehearst. The guy who wasn’t really our brother did a better job of protecting him than I did. A murderer turned out to be more loyal than me. He even killed Dad, sort of, so Peter wouldn’t have his own father’s blood on his hands.

I knew when Peter brought up the baseball thing that he was going to forgive me. He didn’t just then, though, because our conversation was cut short by a storm warning that sent us back to Coyote Sands.

***

When we got back, Claire told us that Ma had gone missing in the ferocious dust storm that kicked up out of nowhere. Ma finally got the closure she’d come here for. She told us she thought she’d lost her sister along with her parents and the others who were caught in the mayhem that led to United States soldiers gunning everyone down. Ma’s guilt at leaving her sister behind led to the formation of the Company, to protect specials so that nothing like that would ever happen again. Talk about famous last words.

Alice had the power to create storms and like Peter, her power was ignited by her emotional state. She couldn’t control it. But she didn’t die. She’s been here all these years, hiding. I don't know what my mother expected once she found her. Did she think her sister would forgive her, come home with us and we’d all live happily ever after? You’d think Ma would know better.

She was quiet and withdrawn afterwards, so unlike her usual self, when we regrouped in the diner with Bennet and Claire. Suresh stayed behind, still at war with his own family demons I guess. I had to coax Ma to join us at the table. I feel like she finally understands that she can’t let her visions get in the way of what’s right. No more plotting and scheming. In the end it was fear that was her undoing, and mine, too. We have to do things differently now, to learn to live with these powers instead of fighting them.

It was Peter who summed it up, that we needed to be a family, not a company. We needed to find a way to forgive each other. For the first time in months, I felt hopeful. I’d lost my wife and children and that was a bitter pill to swallow. My memories of the father I had hero-worshipped were forever tainted by what he became. I’d damaged my career and my reputation, perhaps irrevocably. But I had these people, at least, my family. Ma, Peter, Claire, hell, even Bennet. It was more than I deserved.

“You mean it?” I asked Peter. I studied his face while he glanced around at the wood-paneled walls in a diner that was like a relic from the 1970s.

“We’re stronger together than we are apart,” he said when his gaze returned to rest on mine. He  sounded a little like his old, idealistic self even if he no longer looked the part with dust coating his hair and shadows around his eyes. I vowed then that I would make it up to all of them. I would be the man my brother used to believe I was, if not the Superman Claire wanted.

We didn’t have long to revel in our newly regained sense of family because we were suddenly riveted by the television suspended above us on the diner’s wall. “Who the hell is _that?”_ I asked of no one in particular when I saw my own face beaming at us from the screen.

*** 

_New York, in a Nightmare. No idea when._

 

I stopped reading.  _Sylar._ It was the same answer, then and now.

“Took you long enough, Petrelli.” I could hear his smirk as he shifted back into his body.

_You son of a bitch!_

“Tut, tut. Why so angry? Now who’s giving in to tantrums...?” He was enjoying this and I hated to give him the satisfaction of reacting to him, but with all of the returned memories so fresh, the lure of anger was a more powerful magnet than logic or reason.

 _You’re a psychopath! You’ve terrorized my entire family. You_ murdered _me._

“I thought we’d already covered that and _now_ you’re upset?”

_Yeah well it didn’t seem real when I couldn't remember my life._

“Let me be the first to congratulate you then on getting your memories back. You didn’t even need to read that sorry pile of scribble.” Sylar inclined his head toward the notebooks.

_What are you talking about? I finished it. Or most of it._

“How...? I just - ” He cut himself off, looking directly at the notebooks now. There were maybe ten or fifteen pages left to read in the blue notebook that had been at the bottom of the pile when I had started reading. A few of the sheets from the stack of loose papers that had been tucked among the back pages lay unfolded on the table. I hadn’t read them and now that Sylar’s attention (and, therefore, mine) was focused on those sheets, it was clear that I hadn’t written them. It was almost eerily similar to my handwriting except for the backwards slant of the letters. They must have been what Sylar had referred to hours ago. He said he’d contributed to the journal when he thought he was me.

Sylar was muttering about abilities not working here. There had been a time during an eclipse when my flying ability had deserted me. It wasn’t just me either - Peter, the Haitian, the Haitian’s madman brother - all of us were powerless then. To my knowledge, no eclipses had taken place since I’d come to roost in Sylar's brain. There wasn’t one happening now. Theoretically, his abilities should work and the shapeshifting while I read the journal proved that his powers were still there. It figured that it had happened involuntarily. He wouldn’t have willingly given me my body back.

An impatient fist pounded the table. The notebooks jumped and the papers scattered. “I used to understand,” he said, grinding the words between his teeth. “I knew how things worked.”

He sounded so different when he was confused. The tough-talking bravado faded and he was just another guy, bewildered and frightened like all of us who were afflicted with these strange powers we couldn't begin to understand. Yeah well, cry me a river.

Sylar wanted to know how much I remembered now that I had read the journals. Everything had come back, even fragments of the past that I hadn’t written about. In short, my life.

_I met you in my office and we traded insults. You knocked me out, I think...then Peter came to get me. We formulated a plan and we went to the Stanton to confront you._

“And that worked out so well for all of us,” he said, recovering his haughty demeanor. “You could have tried talking to me. We could have negotiated.” He sounded offended that we hadn’t treated him like a reasonable human being, sitting around a table and hammering out a deal.

_Oh yeah? How would that have worked? What did we have to bargain with that you might have wanted? Honorary membership in the esteemed Petrelli clan?_

“Fine. Forget I mentioned it. Do you remember the fight?”

I did and I was going to tell it my way. I recalled arriving at the Stanton Hotel and being stopped by security. They said someone claiming to be me was already upstairs. My buddy Liam Samuels was on duty and he believed me when I explained that Sylar was impersonating me. I showed them what I could do and they all went for their guns but Liam settled them down. Peter and I convinced them their men would be sitting ducks if they tried to go after Sylar and they let us have a head start. Bennet was there. He said that Sylar had Claire. We told him we had a plan.

“Ah yes, the lovely and courageous Claire...so much potential. Too bad she’s a whiny brat.”

Awash in memories of what I now knew was my last day alive, I let the insult to Claire go by without comment. I saw myself and Peter walking down a long hall on our way to confront Sylar. It felt good to have him at my side again. I’m not a mushy guy - Ma, Dad, me, we played our cards close to the vest. Not Peter. From the time he could speak, he said what was on his mind and his face had always been a live broadcast of whatever he was feeling. It was easy, natural, to say it back when he was always telling me he loved me. He never outgrew that and I’m glad. Too many of us don’t say what matters most before it’s too late. That’s one thing I got right.

 _Peter and I were walking down the hall to the room where you were. I wanted him to know I loved him, in case I didn't make it out of there. I didn’t think I would._ _He said he knew and he loved me, too..._

 _“_ As much as I’m digging this fabled tale of brotherly love, it’s the fight I’m interested in.” Sylar drawled the words leisurely, every syllable accented with his familiar sarcasm before his mood plummeted like the stock market on a bad day. The unpredictable highs and lows were as much a part of his intensity as the ever-present biting wit. “The fight, Petrelli. Get to the goddamn point!”

_You were there. You know what happened._

“I want to hear _you_ tell it. Do you remember when I -“  He made a quick slicing motion with his index finger.

 _No._ I grimaced inwardly with my non-existent face. _And I don't want to know about it but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway._.

“ _I_ remember. I remember **all** of my deaths and thanks to your mother and Parkman, I get to relive yours too. I’ll say this for you, you’re not a coward. You didn’t beg for your life, not that I gave you much time. You didn’t cry out or plead for help while you bled to death. In your last moments, you finally stopped thinking about yourself. You saw your children’s faces and you said goodbye to them. You were thinking of your wife, oops I mean ex-wife…” he chortled.

He couldn’t have destroyed me any worse if he had cut my throat a thousand more times. It would have been easier to take. Somehow I wrested control from him long enough to slink back into hiding. The darkness of his partitioned mind was preferable to his active presence. I’d wanted so badly to escape his brain but that was before I knew I was nothing but a dead man’s memory. There was no escape, only a strange sort of peace when I was able to shut him out - the peace of nothingness and, at times, non-awareness. In life, I had tried so hard to be somebody. In death, I could just be.

***

Staying hidden was an epic but silent battle. Sylar was a strong-willed bastard but I hadn’t been my parents’ son without having learned to exert my own will. Oh, how things had changed since he’d found himself - with me along for the ride - in this forsaken city. It seemed so long ago that I had wanted to be me again and he had wanted me gone. Now our roles were reversed. I could feel him attempting at times to yank me forward and other times stewing in temporary acceptance. He had to eat, had to sleep, had to stay busy to ward off insanity in this eternally silent world. I had no such needs. 

Curiosity got the better of me. It wasn’t my death I cared to hear about but the lives that went on without me. I needed to know how the people I left behind had fared since my death. How had I ended up in Sylar’s head? And why? My mother, Parkman and Bennet knew but did anyone else?

_So when did you realize you weren’t me?_

“I knew you wouldn’t last forever in there,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to read the rest of the journal? It would be faster than having me tell you.”  
  
_Just give me the highlights._

“It’s a long and complicated story and our favorite creepy telepath is right at the center of it. You know, I can appreciate your predicament being stuck in my head. I was in Parkman’s head for a while. Trust me, you don’t have it nearly as bad.” The guy’s conceit was boundless although for once I agreed with him.

_That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes me feel a little sorry for you. How did I end up in your head and you in his?_

He snickered. “You still have your sense of humor, I see, and look, we agree on something. I suppose when Parkman shoved my consciousness out of my body so that your mother could have her son back, it had to go somewhere. I made him regret it, though. I was a better Parkman than he was, too. His wife sure thought so.”

_Ugh, you’re disgusting. Spare me the details._

“So moral of you, Petrelli. Not like when you were cheating on your paralyzed wife. But fine, I won’t kiss and tell. You finally figured out you weren’t you when the Haitian sent Peter to a storage locker where your dead body was being kept. You tagged along and got the shock of your life, except of course it wasn’t your life anymore. There were signs before that. My body, my abilities were too powerful for you. You were doing things you could never do before. And as usual, you were terrified and went crying to your brother. At least he appreciated abilities, although he should have realized that something was wrong. After that, you found Parkman and I made you - which was really me -  touch my hand - which was Parkman’s hand. Once you did that, I was able to get back in my body. You fought me for awhile but of course, I won.”

I wasn’t sure I had followed that business about the hand-touching but I got the gist of it _. What did you do once you were back in your own body? I don’t get why you’d go back to Parkman._

“It’s complicated,” Sylar said. And that was all he would tell me for the moment.

*** 

Time went by. I don't know how much. Sylar was the time-keeper and since the calendar was in his brain, he didn’t keep any written record of its passage that I could see. Watches that numbered the days were useless when I didn't know the month or year. Apparently digital clocks weren’t his thing. No calendar hung from the fridge, no tick marks were etched into the wall. It was only the light outside and the change of seasons that gave me a clue though it could have been years that had passed since I’d last seen a fall leaf or a spring flower, or it could have been months. It didn’t matter anyway.

In some ways he was adjusting to the solitude. He formed routines. I’d emerge to find him reading, or walking to the library to get more books. Or he’d be in somebody’s abandoned apartment, searching for more timepieces to fiddle with. I guess when you have all the time in the world, it doesn’t seem like a luxury anymore and he had to put some structure in place to distract himself from the abyss of eternity. I felt a twinge of sympathy in spite of myself. Sylar deserved a lot of things, even the death penalty if he could ever be tried and convicted. The world, if it still existed, was better off without him. But I’m not sure anyone, even him, deserved to be an everlasting castaway.

Much of the time, we co-existed in silence. I stayed hidden or else I hovered at the edge of his awareness; he knew I was there because he’d occasionally mutter comments (mostly insults) but he’d go about his activities without attempting to engage me. That was good enough for me, so I kept quiet, too. Forever is a long time, though, especially in a place where nothing ever happened, not even the buzz of insects. He was obviously lonely. Here was a guy who’d had little use for people, except to kill for their abilities or toy with them for his amusement, and now he missed their presence after so long alone. He was the poster child for misunderstood maniacs; passing the time with broken clocks and a library filled with books was a poor substitute for a real life. I guess that’s why sooner or later he’d break down and talk to me.

After ignoring me for days, he’d ask me a question out of the blue. Occasionally he would slip and almost say “Ma” or “Dad” before catching himself. When Ma came up in conversation, he managed to make the name _Angela_ sound like _Medusa_. He didn’t seem to hate my father to the same degree. I couldn’t fathom the purpose of his questions. Maybe it was just an excuse to get out  of his own head - even if, in reality, that’s exactly where he was when we interacted..

_I don't get why you ask. You have the memories._

He conceded that, yes, that was true, and sometimes he forgot they weren’t his own. But he didn’t always have the thoughts and feelings that went with them, especially the older memories. “When you pull up a memory,” he explained with uncharacteristic patience, “it’s familiar, even if it’s something you haven’t thought about in a long time. You've lived through it and perhaps recalled it a time or two. I’m seeing parts of your life for the first time and not necessarily in any order like a narrative.” I guess that was understandable, as much as any of it could be.

“Your father was your hero. How do you feel about him now?” he probed, playing psychiatrist when he was the one who needed a shrink.

_What do you care?_

“It’s interesting,” he said mildly. “I enjoy figuring things out, how they work, how people work. People are far more complicated than timepieces.”

_Dad was complicated, that’s for sure. There are things about him I still admire. He was tough, smart, disciplined. He taught me a lot. I always saw him as strong. He wasn’t. Powerful, maybe, but that was the abilities. Underneath he was weak. Afraid._

“Hmm. Yes. I agree. Like you.” Well that was true so no point in getting offended or arguing.

According to Sylar, Dad had misread Nietzsche and Sun Tzu. “ _The Art of War_ is more about maintaining peace than waging war. The best way to win a war is not to have one at all.”

It was a weird thing to say considering his former occupation of killing people. What did he know about peace?

_Oh yeah? Doesn’t surprise me. Dad saw what he wanted to see._

Then it was on to Bennet, who Sylar hated even more than my mother, and Mohinder, “the world’s dumbest genius,” although Sylar acknowledged he could be a wily s.o.b. at times. Parkman was tied with my mother and Bennet for most hated and the butt of much malicious humor, which I hate to admit amused me. I didn’t ask how I hadn’t made the top of the list. I was one of his few enemies who was dead at his hand. I guess there’s not much point hating someone you’ve already killed. A few times he’d tried to goad me about Claire’s lesbian relationship. When I didn't take the bait - I didn't care who Claire dated as long as they were good to her - he appeared to have lost interest in talking about her. Mohinder’s father was another enemy but he’d settled that score long ago.

It was as if Sylar hadn’t existed before his killing spree began. The occasional oblique references to his parents and his past were brushed aside as none of my business whenever I’d ask. It was hardly fair when he knew everything about me that he cared to recall from my memories but then one should hardly expect fairness from one’s murderer.

I didn’t know who I hated more when he let it slip that he’d worked with Danko behind the scenes. Sylar just laughed and offered another revelation.

“It was Danko who knocked you out in your office, not me. He tasered you.”

It made sense, in a despicable sort of way, that they’d been co-conspirators...the enemy of my enemy. That was when he acquired the shapeshifting ability. It seemed to be the one power he didn’t have much control of.

 _What about my brother?_ I asked one day when he was cursing Bennet for the millionth time.

“What about him?” he asked with an almost imperceptible wary edge. What’s _that_ about? I thought but I kept my curiosity casual.

_You never talk about him. I’d think he would be in your top five of people you hate. For one thing, he was always getting in your way. And he had all those powers which I’m sure you had to want a piece of, especially his original ability to absorb other powers. So why isn’t  Peter on your list?_

“Who said he isn’t? Just because I don’t have anything to say about him doesn’t mean he’s not on the list. Anyway I don’t think his original ability would have worked for me.” A slight pause and then, “I had my own methods of, ah, absorbing powers. I didn’t need his.”

 _It’s odd, that’s all. You have something to say about everyone._ He didn’t reply and I made a mental note to revisit the topic, or at least to pay closer attention to why he might be skirting the subject. There was something there that didn’t ring true. I wasn’t likely to overlook finding my brother dead at Ma’s house with the evidence of Sylar’s brain surgery snaking across his forehead in the form of dried blood.  

***

When Sylar wasn’t picking me apart or complaining about how badly everyone had treated him, I had to endure his incessant re-reading of the Ken Follett book. I asked him once if there was a sequel. When he said that he thought there might be, I suggested he read it.

 _For the love of God, read something, anything, but that damn book. Hell, I’ll write the sequel myself just for something else to do_. That made him chuckle.

In spite of his routines, his books, clocks, ransacking and aimless walks through empty neighborhoods, the silence was wearing on him. I could tell. For several weeks, he picked his way through cemeteries, reading every tombstone and mausoleum inscription.

 _Looking for ancestors?_ I asked the first time I was aware of him crouching beside a gravestone.

“No, more recent than that.”

_You know they don’t bury people here anymore. There’s no more room, unless you’re the mayor or somebody like that._

He didn’t answer and didn’t seem to care, just kept on searching until that, too, lost its allure. Some days, he didn’t get out of bed, not even to eat. For awhile, he let his appearance go, didn’t shave (made sense, why bother?), change his clothes or comb his hair, but that must have made him more depressed because he eventually attended to his hygiene again. I knew he was unraveling for real when he asked me to play chess.

 _No way, man. I hate that fucking game._ We tried checkers. What can I say? I was humoring him, because his moping was worse than reading the same book ad nauseum. Without a body, I was a lousy opponent. He had to make my moves for me and it didn’t do much for suspense or strategy.

When the tantrums started, I retreated. It was disturbing to watch. I figured sooner or later he’d get around to trying suicide and I was curious to know whether he really couldn’t die. I didn’t want to be around for his attempts, though. I wasn’t afraid of what it might mean for me. I was already dead and I’d given up any attachment to my existence. If whatever I was amounted to a collection of memories in his head, I didn’t think I’d be sticking around to miss myself. Anyway, my real soul, assuming it exists, is somewhere else. This self in his head can’t be all that’s left of me.

Deep in the recesses of his brain, I wasn't aware of him unless I wanted to be, or when he forced the issue. Over time, I began to sense him rifling through my memories as if looking for a specific moment. I never knew what propelled those actions and I didn’t ask. He had expressed disdain for my life more times than I could count and he seemed to find my past disgusting and pathetic. Why Sylar would deliberately seek out memories was an interesting question, and one he would only use against me if I let him.

***

 “You need to finish your journal, Petrelli.” Sylar’s voice sounded rough, rusty from not having spoken aloud in however long it had been since his last breakdown. He was sitting on a park bench, watching the East River roll by. There was very little that moved in this city and nothing that made as much of a production of it as the bodies of water surrounding Manhattan. It was easy to understand why Sylar was drawn to it.

_What do you mean ‘finish it?’ It’s already finished. I’m dead._

“Your story didn’t end with your death. I want you to write everything that happened after,” he insisted.

_I thought you said you did that already when you thought you were me._

“I added a few bits and pieces. I want a complete record.”

 One thing about Sylar, just when I would begin to think I could predict his behavior, he would say or do something completely off the wall.

_It’s not really my story after the Stanton. I’m not real, you’ve said so yourself._

“Your story and mine are intertwined, no matter how either of us may feel about it.” He walked over to the railing that edged the pathway overlooking the river and pitched a rock that I hadn’t noticed him holding into the water. It barely made a splash before it was swallowed by the river. “You're the only one who can tell it and sound like Nathan Petrelli. My perspective on things is … different from yours.”

 _Yeah, no kidding._ This was bizarre, even for Sylar. It was yet another sign of encroaching madness. Not that he wasn’t already insane, but he’d been lucid before. Talking to me about about my life, now wanting me to be his biographer, it was twisted. If this scenario in a dead city really was his punishment, it was working.

“Good,” he said, completely ignoring my response. “We’ll start tomorrow.”

He didn’t shapeshift again. We argued about it for a while. He insisted he needed to remain present to help me with the details.

_So write it your damn self! I’m not your memoirist._

“No you’re your own. If you want any hope of redemption, you need to tell your story, all of it.”

_My loved ones have forgiven me. Since when does someone who claims God is a fairytale believe in redemption anyway and why would you care about mine?_

“Fine,” he breathed out an annoyed sigh. “I’ll try to shapeshift if it will get you to stop complaining and cooperate. I don’t think it will work though.”

He was right. Whatever circumstances had caused it to happen before, Sylar wasn’t able to duplicate them. Which meant I would have to endure the whole mess of his memories of being me in painful detail with him hovering and probably gloating over my discomfort. I reminded myself that nobody would ever read the crap that came out of this unholy alliance. It was just to pass the time and maybe it would give me answers about my loved ones.

We bickered on and off over the stupid journal, retreated to our hiding places and slowly crept out, cautiously testing the waters. Pieces of Sylar’s story came out, not in any great detail and most of it unrelated to the journal because it was before he was me. I didn’t know why he was telling it. If I had to paint it, it would be surreal. Dali's _Impermanence of Memory_ comes to mind, but the way he told it was more like a Jackson Pollock - violent, messy, lonely, a force of nature. He alluded to abuse that he never described and the sense of abandonment and crushing inferiority complex were evident, though he never used those words. He may have thought that his swaggering, sarcasm and wicked wit hid his insecurities. Instead, they were a flashing neon arrow pointing right at the core of his personality. It had always been there. Shame. That was what Sylar and I had in common.

One thing I hadn’t failed to notice was how he was coming apart, piece by piece, as the magnitude of his everlasting solitude weighed down on him. With nobody else to talk to and no other target, he took it out on me.

 _Stop. Stop! Please._ It had been too good to be true that Sylar hadn’t revisited our earlier conversation about how I died. Now he was recalling, in vivid detail, how he had sliced my throat open and watched as the blood bubbled out. I was begging and I knew it was useless. I had lost any sense of pride. I just wanted it to be over.

_Why are you doing this? What do you get out of it?_

He ignored me and went on with his monologue. He liked to hear himself talk even more than my father had.

“You finally did the right thing, Senator. You sacrificed yourself to save the president. You died a hero. Bravo. Too bad it all had to be kept hush-hush.”

What was I supposed to say to that? Thank you for noticing? I didn’t go to the Stanton to be a hero. It wasn’t my legacy I was thinking of. It was atonement.

“Cat got your tongue? Oh right, you don’t have a tongue because you’re literally nobody now. Did you want to hear more about your last moments, how your life flashed before your eyes? That’s a myth, you know. It’s not what really happens when we die.” He was pacing around the apartment, swiveling every so often as if I were another person in the room and he was turning to toss verbal grenades at me.

“We see our regrets. What we did. What we didn’t do.” Now his voice was soft and he sounded like the narrator of a documentary on the deep, hidden meaning of life and death. “Your last thoughts were for the people who would mourn your death….you hoped that Peter had made it to safety to carry out the plan. Your mother and Claire would be devastated if they lost both of you.”

_Why do you feel the need to tell me all of this?_

Even without a body, I could sense the vibration that rumbled from somewhere in Sylar’s chest and roared out of his throat.

“I didn't ask for this!!” His pacing grew more frantic and he was knocking into furniture as he raved liked a tormented asylum-resident. “You think I want your fucking memories in my head? Nobody mourns when I die. I know, I’ve done it dozens of times.”

I had nothing to say to all of that. Perhaps if he hadn’t killed so many people, it might have been easier to make friends, a thought I smothered almost as soon as it arose. No point in getting him angrier. I tried to crawl back into the nothingness and found myself, what there was of me, pinned by the iron force of his will. I wasn't going anywhere.

“I understand why I’m trapped here forever. I deserve it. _You_ deserve _this_.”

He’d used up all of his oxygen for the moment and his machete mouth went slack long enough for him to slow his wild breathing. When he continued, his voice was pitched lower though still full of sharp edges that cut through the hum of ticking clocks and the vast silence beyond the apartment.

“So don’t tell me how much you _loved_ your family,” he said, as if love were too disgusting to contemplate. “It’s too late for that. You threw away everything you were given because you were too afraid of abilities. If I have to live with your memories and all your pathetic heartbreak as your life ebbed away, then you’re going to listen to me!”

 _Alright then. I’m listening._ What choice did I have? It was bad enough to be a conscious memory in his deranged mind. If moods were rollercoasters, his would defy the laws of physics.

“I’ve said all I need to for now. You need to read the rest of the journal so you can finish writing it.” He sat down at the table, stretching his long legs in front of him. I guess he’d gotten his fit out of his system.

_I’ve read it. My last entry was after I left Coyote Sands._

“You haven’t read the parts I contributed. Don’t you want to know how I lived your life?”

_Not particularly. Just tell me you didn’t use my body to go around cutting into people’s heads._

“First of all,” he sniffed, “it was not _your_ body. I was forced to shape-shift but it was always _my_ body.”

_Fine, my likeness, my personality, whatever._

“Don’t worry, Senator. I was a very good boy. I told you I’d be better than you. I went to work, I did my job, I took M - your mother to lunch - by the way, sushi is disgusting - I went to supervised visits with the boys...”

_You saw my boys? If you laid a finger on them -_

“Relax. I didn’t hurt them. What kind of a monster do you think I am? I don’t harm children.”

 _No, you just kill their parents. Claire was a child when you terrorized her. You would have killed her if my brother hadn’t intervened. Didn't you kill her friend?_  

“That was an accident. She wasn’t supposed to die….I had the wrong girl.” He didn’t sound so sure of himself at the moment. Was that actual guilt? He sure as hell didn’t feel bad about killing me; he was glad, except that backfired on him big time, didn’t it?

_Why did you go back to Parkman after you got out of his head?_

“Oh I didn’t go right back to him. First I paid a visit to your family. I spent Thanksgiving with mommy-dearest and baby brother. I think I might have eaten a little too much pumpkin pie and I’m pretty sure I forgot my company manners.”

 _You bastard! What did you do to them?_ There was no outlet for my rage. I vowed that I would do everything in my power to torment him if I had to rattle the inside of his skull until he wished he were the dead man locked in somebody else’s head.

“It hardly matters now, does it? Everyone is dead after all.”

_Stop talking in goddamn riddles. Who’s dead? Did you kill them?_

He got up and strode to the window, lifted the sash and stuck his head out. Outside it was summer, all bright sunlight and leaves whispering on the sidewalk trees.

“Look around, Senator. There’s nobody here. What else can it mean but that they’re all dead? I didn’t kill them. If anything, your saintly brother tried to kill me. He’s wicked with a nail gun.”

There it was. He was finally talking about a topic he’d been avoiding. _My brother did that? Good. I’m proud of him. I hope it hurt like hell, you fucker. You said he was a mess last time you saw him. Quit dragging it out and tell me what you did._

He slammed the window shut and the glass vibrated against the frame for several seconds.

“Fuck you, Petrelli, and your whole goddamn family. None of you are innocent in this.” Crossing the room, Sylar stepped into the bathroom to face the mirror.  Slowly, he raised his head and glared at his reflection, feral and terrifying, from under his formidable eyebrows.

“There, now you can look me in the eye when I speak to you,” he said, biting the words off. “You want to know what I _did_ to your brother? I made him face reality. That’s what I did. He wouldn’t accept that you were dead. He wanted revenge and he wanted you back. He was going to drug me but I was one step ahead of him. I threw him out of an elevator at Mercy Heights and he crashed into a wall but you know your brother. He wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted. _You.”_

That was definitely something I could relate to. Peter’s always been relentless when he gets fixated on a goal.

“We fought; he had the Haitian’s power and we were evenly matched until Peter gained the advantage. You know how good he is with his fists. He pummeled me - my face, my ribs, my gut. He was going for maximum pain, as if that would work. When it didn’t, he kicked it up to outright torture and re-enacted the crucifixion. Imagine casting _me_ in the role of Jesus. Torturing my body failed, so he moved on to mind-rape.”

There was nothing funny about his horrible joke and no humor in Sylar’s expression as he described in graphic detail how Peter had nailed both of his hands and then drove several nails into his thigh. He didn’t know me at all, even after _being_ me, if he thought I would find comedy in any of it. I wouldn't have faulted Peter for killing him. Nobody would. Surely even my brother’s rigid morality would have seen the need to rid the world of Sylar and if there was some pain delivered in the process, the bastard deserved it. Yet I was shocked by the violence and cruelty Sylar described. Sylar would probably have done the same, or worse, if he’d had the upper hand but this was a side of my brother I’d never seen.

It didn’t make me feel good to know he’d done it for me. It was humbling in the most awful way possible, the human equivalent of your cat dropping a dead mouse at your feet because it thinks it’s giving you a gift. Only it was worse because the cat doesn’t do it with malice or violate its own nature and deeply held principles. Sylar was no innocent mouse but that didn’t make it right. Peter had to know that.

“There was no upside for me,” Sylar said. The placid tone made his words land harder than when he had raved and shouted. “His bargain was letting me heal from the pain and injuries in return for my body and mind disappearing like yesterday’s trash, so I could be you. As if you were worth him sinking to that level of depravity. Needless to say, I refused.”

I couldn’t cry but somewhere inside, the grief was pouring out of me. _Pete, I’m so sorry._

“He still wasn’t giving up on getting you back. He used the Haitian’s power to wipe my mind and then I was you again. We went to the roof because where else would Peter stage a nice, brotherly chat to reminisce about old times?”

He smirked with a trace of genuine humor that broke the tension for a few seconds. _Only my brother_ , I thought. Sylar lowered his head and I couldn’t see out of his eyes. He probably needed a break from the intensity of the story he was reliving. I know I did. He and I had never communicated for such a lengthy span of time, although it was mostly him talking. I didn’t want to listen at first but he drew me in with his understated delivery. Like every spectator ever at a disaster scene, I couldn’t look away.

“It was a good plan that he had to get you back and it almost worked but he miscalculated,” he said when his face became visible in the mirror again. Weariness showed in the pink-rimmed eyelids surrounding his bloodshot whites.

“Peter underestimated the strength of my will to survive and the depth of your death wish. You knew you were dead and you were fighting me for his sake, but you were tired. I was shapeshifting, cycling back and forth so fast I still don’t know what was me, what was you and what was me pretending to be you. I had to get away from him. I climbed over the ledge to jump and he grabbed me and wouldn’t let go….”

Sylar’s brows were drawn upward and his dark brown eyes were glistening. His hand came at his eyes again, blocking the reflection in the mirror from my sight, and then his fingers dragged through his hair. 

“Peter was a wreck. He had to know that I’d won but he was still struggling to hold onto you. Your brother is the most ridiculously persistent person I’ve ever met,” he said, shaking his head, almost in admiration if not for the context. I couldn’t disagree.

“He was crying. I don’t know how he could even see and between the tears and the snot, his face was a mess, but he still refused to release his grip on your arm. He demanded that you pull yourself up and of course I wouldn't let you. You didn’t want to anyway. It was time to end it so I gave him the teary farewell and gooey words of love he seemed to need. Or maybe it was you saying it. I don't really know. He finally let go of you and you fell. The end.”  After a long pause, Sylar added, “By the way, the last thing he said was that he loved you. Because that’s how every Petrell brothers’ saga has to end.”

It was over. I didn’t think I could listen to much more of it. I don’t know who I felt worse for: myself, since I’m the one who was dead, my brother for being brought so low, or the psychopath in the mirror using the back of his hand to wipe the wet trail of tears from his face. Why was I shocked to realize Sylar had feelings? If my brother, the kindest guy I know, could resort to cruelty, then why shouldn’t a killer have the capacity for tears, however selfish or manipulative his display of emotion might have been.

“You get it now, Petrelli, don’t you? You understand what you’ve done?” Sylar was still standing in front of the mirror, his palms planted on either side of the sink while he stared at his reflection as if he could see me there.

_I’m not sure why you had to put either of us through telling that story to show me the error of my ways. Yeah, I get it. I got it a long time ago, without any help from you._

_“_ Then you know why I had to kill you. I could have killed him, too, on that roof. He didn’t have as much control of the Haitian’s power as he thought he did, especially once he started sniveling.”

The fucking nerve of this guy. He “had” to kill me _._ Who made him the angel of death? Who was going to kill him for his crimes? It didn’t take a background as a prosecutor to know that premeditated murder was a helluva lot worse than anything I’d done.

_Why didn’t you kill him?_

"Peter's been a thorn in my side since he shoved me off that roof in Odessa. I’ve killed him a few times. He wouldn’t stay dead.” With a shrug, he concluded, “I guess he doesn’t deserve to die.”

_Not even after all that, at Mercy?_

“It’s something I’m conflicted about. I’ll have to think about it some more. I never expected him to invade my mind...that was low. I blame him for that and I suppose I could criticize his poor taste in brothers if he’d had better choices, but you’re the only one he had. I can’t fault him for his loyalty. That’s what brothers do.” One eyebrow went up with the unspoken subtext. _Some_ brothers. Obviously not me.

With that, he splashed water on his face, dried himself with a towel and left the bathroom. It was a long time before either of us were willing to speak to the other again.

Eventually he told me the rest. I don’t know why but Sylar seemed intent on filling in the gaps he hadn’t yet covered - everything leading up to Mercy Heights and what had later sent him back to Parkman’s. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care that he kept going, telling me things that came after Mercy Heights, when he wasn’t me anymore. This part was his story, not mine, not even a fake me.

His interactions with Claire enraged me to the point of another stalemate. I couldn’t bear to think of Sylar’s hands on my daughter. I couldn’t listen to another word for days or maybe it was weeks - I was never sure - until he and I were both ready to go another round. There wasn’t much else to do, nobody else for him to talk to. It’s like I was his therapist, except I didn’t give him any advice. ‘Quit killing people’ would have been the long and short of it and I don’t think that’s what Sylar wanted to hear. He seemed to have figured that out on his own although with nobody around to kill - or not - there was no way to test the strength of his resolve.

 _I remember now that you were talking to Parkman but at the time,_ I said, when we were speaking again _, I didn’t recognize him or know what it all meant. I barely had any idea of what I was. What did you want from him?_

“To free me from my abilities.” Sylar stated, casually, as if it were as simple as the apple he bit into. Leaning back against the couch cushions, he crossed one leg in a right angle and let his foot rest on the opposite knee.

After all this time and every bizarre twist in the maze that was my life and, then, my imprisoned half-life, I hadn’t lost the capacity to be shocked.

_Why? Can he even do that?_

“It made sense at the time. His power should have worked that way if he could turn me into you.”

_Yeah except that didn’t work very well, did it? I don’t think telepathy is a permanent fix for anything. What happened? Did he refuse?_

“No. He tried. He said he couldn’t do it. I was talking to him and then - I don’t remember what happened. The next thing I can recall is finding myself here, and everyone was gone.” He sipped at his tea and stared into the cup, and I could tell by the way my vision blurred that he wasn’t seeing the tea.

_Oh jeez, you don’t get it, do you? Aren’t you supposed to be the brilliant one? This is Parkman’s doing. He creates illusions. His father did the same thing. I was with him once and -_

“Yes, I know about Maury Parkman. I have all of your memories. You _are_ your memories. I’m not really talking to Nathan Petrelli.” Just to drive home the point, he said, “You don’t exist. Remember?”

_Haha, that’s pretty funny. The irony of asking a guy who’s nothing but a memory if he remembers._

“You’re hilarious, Senator. But this isn’t an illusion,” he said, setting his mug onto the coffee table. “You’ve been here the whole time I have so you should know. How could he recreate New York?” He spread his hands and looked around. “This is my apartment. Parkman’s never been here. I eat, I sleep, I piss, I talk to you, for some masochistic reason. Parkman can’t make illusions that detailed.”

_Parkman doesn’t decide what the illusions will be about. Your own mind does that._

He wasn’t buying it. I couldn’t fathom how he could be so blind and deluded. For such a supposedly intelligent guy, he’d made a lot of blunders and trusting Parkman to help him was the king of all fuck-ups. He was holding fast to the idea that there had been some kind of apocalypse and that his lonely predicament was a punishment. He was right about that. It _was_ a punishment, but one exacted by an enemy, not delivered by the impersonal hand of fate.

_Whatever gets you through the night, Sylar, but I don't see how you’re going to die alone when you've said you can’t die. Can’t have it both ways though that seems to be your modus operandi._

_“_ Prophecies aren’t always literal. Die alone, eternity alone, what’s the difference. I’m alone and that’s the point. I was supposed to find a connection but I failed...I thought it might be Claire...I don’t know how I could have believed that.”

_Would you listen to yourself? Do you make this shit up as you go along? Claire would never connect with you. She despises you and with good reason. You sound like my mother with her visions of doomsday._

“Do not,” Sylar said through gritted teeth, “compare me to that woman. Ever.”

 That was how our conversations tended to go.

We spent a lot of time pissed off. I’m sure he would have liked to kill me all over again if he could and the feeling was mutual. We had finally begun to write down the things he wanted to document, with him fooling himself that I was writing it. It was his hands that wrote, his words that narrated the stories that I then dictated back to him. We kept to ourselves a lot when we weren’t writing. He had improved at locking his mind down to keep me from emerging. I had gotten better at emerging anyway. The reverse was true, too - he could force me out and I could shut him out. It was a truce of sorts.

I had the feeling he was mining me for information, sometimes openly, other times surreptitiously invading my dark place. He began hiding from me, keeping me away from seeing him in the mirror. I wasn’t fooled. Something was up. I had almost forgotten what he looked like, until he slipped. He was in front of the mirror, holding an ice pack to his cheek.

 _What happened to you? Did you get in a fight with a lamppost?_  

“Something like that. Go away.”

 _Suit yourself._ I went.

Sylar woke up agitated one morning. He rushed through breakfast and when he’d finished and cleaned up, he announced that I needed to finish the journal. Today.

_Fuck that journal. Nobody’s ever gonna read it. What’s the point?_

“I’m going to level with you, Petrelli.” I waited. He seemed to be struggling with a compulsion, trying not to check and re-check a door he knew he’d locked. “It’s not for your redemption. It’s about mine.”

_Your redemption? You want me to forgive you for murdering me, terrorizing my family and pretty much killing everything in your path?_

Sylar stumbled through the craziest declaration I’d heard from him in all our time together. “It’s not primarily your forgiveness I want -  though it would be nice if you could find it in yourself to do that. I - I suppose it would help me with what I need to do. It’s Peter. The journal is for him. He needs to come to terms with everything that’s happened.”

_WHAT???!!! You want my brother to forgive you and you think giving him this journal is going to do that? You’ve never expressed an ounce of remorse. Try again, Sylar._

“I should have known you’d make this difficult. Alright.” Big sigh, pacing, hands running through his hair like a nervous guy about to propose to a woman he wasn’t sure would accept him. Except this was no proposal.  An intake of breath and then, rapid fire words.

“I’m sorry, Nathan.” He paused long enough for me to notice that it was the first time he’d called me by my given name, not Petrelli, not Senator. “I didn't have to kill you. I was too powerful for you to be a threat but I wanted you dead. You had everything and it all came so easily…you didn’t even know how good you had it. You didn’t appreciate it. It felt like the right thing to do, that I owed it to myself and everyone like me, like us, to repay you for what you’d done. It was wrong, cruel, stupid, futile. I regret it.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This change in him had been a long time coming. How long, I couldn’t have said but it was stretched over an immeasurable distance, an ant crawling its way across the desert without realizing how much ground it had covered. It was the last thing I would ever have expected.

It didn’t mean I was going to forgive him. I’d long since accepted being dead. My life and my existence were just an abstraction now. But I believed him. He evaded, omitted, manipulated and rarely told the whole story, almost never in one go, yet to my knowledge, he’d never lied to me in all the time I’d been locked in his mind.

_Well since you put it that way….You’re fucking crazy, Sylar, you know that, right? If anyone could forgive you, it would be Peter. Not me. But he’s never going to see that journal._

“That’s where you’re wrong. There’s something else I haven’t told you. He’s here.”

 

***


End file.
